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Fables  of  Infidelity 


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BEING  AN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  EVIDENCES  OF 
INFIDELITY. 


BT 


Rev.  ROBERT  PATTERSON,  D.  D. 

REVISED  AND  ENLARGED. 


NEW  YORK: 

H.  E.  SIMMONS,  150  Nassau  Street. 
1875. 


Pv3 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1S75,  by 

WESTERN  TRACT  SOCIETY, 

In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  Washington,  D.  C, 
3f/^^ 


Stereotyped  by 

OGDEN,  CAMPBELL  &  CO., 

176  Elm  St.,  Cincinnati. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE. 

Did  the  World  Make  Itself?       ....        7 

Eternity  of  Matter. 

Disproved  by  its  Composite  Nature. 

Disproved  by  its  Motion. 

Evolution  only  a  big  Perpetual  Motion  Humbug. 

Work  of  a  Designer  in  the  Structure  of  the  Eye. 

The  Eye-Maker  sees  over  a  wide  Field  and  far. 

The  Eye-Maker  sees  Perfectly. 


CHAPTER  IT. 
Was  Your  Mother  a  Monkey?    .         .         ,         ,      34 

The  Divine  Fact  of  Evolution  Quite  Different  from  the 

Atheistic  Theory. 
State  the  Question  Sharply — Why  ? 
Darwin's  Answer. 

The  Ancestral  Monkey,  Fish,  Squirt. 
Natural  Selection. 
Intended  to  Exclude  God. 

1.  TJie  History  of  the  Theory, 

Indian;  Phoenician;  Greek;  Popish;  La  Place's  Theory; 

The  Vestiges  of  Creation. 
Herbert  Spencer's  Contradictory  Theory. 

(iii) 


IV  CONTENTS. 

The  Evolutionists'  Hell. 

Spontaneous  Generation — two  Theories;  the  Conflicting 
Theories  of  Progress;  Tremaux;  Laraarek;  the  Cli- 
matal;  Darwin's;  Huxley's;  Parson's;  Mivart's;  Hyatt's; 
Cope's ;  Wallace's;  the  Gods;  Denounced  by  the  Princes 
of  Science. 

Agassiz's  Deliverance  Against  it. 

Imperfection  of  the  Theory  Eked  out. 

Huxley's  Protoplasm. 

TyndiiU's  Potency  of  Life  in  Matter. 

Buchner's  Matter  and  Force. 

Lubbock's  Origin  of  Civilization. 

Consequences  of  the  Brutal  Origin  of  Man. 

Propagandism  of  Atheism. 

2.  The  Theory  lUogieal  and  Incoherent, 

Darwin  Admits  Insufficiency  of  Proof. 

Useless  as  an  Explanation  of  Nature. 

Self-Contradictory;  e.  g.^  Protoplasm. 

"Wallace's  Self-Contradictions. 

Incoherency  of  the  Denial  of  Design  with  the  Assertion  of . 
Progress.. 

Failure  of  Alleged  Facts  to  Sustain  the  Theory. 

Does  not  Account  for  the  Origin  of  Anything. 

Wild  Assumptions  Made  by  Darwin. 

Erroneous  Assumption  of  the  Tendency  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion to  Improve  Breeds. 

Assumption  of  Infinite  Possibility  of  Progress  in  Finite 
Creatures. 

3.  An  Unfounded  Theory. 

No  Evidence  of  the  Facts  Possible. 
None  Ever  Alleged,  save  Gulliver's. 
Domestication  Disproves  Transmutation — Horses;  Pigeons; 

Dogs. 
The  Egyptian  Monuments. 
The  Mummied  Animals. 


CONTENTS. 

The  Geological  Record. 

The  Limits  of  Geological  Time. 

4.  Embryology, 
Testimony  of  Scientists :  * 

1.  Embryology  Only  Analogical. 

2.  Embryos  not  all  Alike. 

3.  Four  Distinct  Plans  of  Structure. 

4.  Germs  Always  True  to  the  Breed. 

5.  Gradations  of  Species. 
Lamarek's  Statement, 

Birth  Descent  not  Inferable  from  Gradation. 
No  such  Imperceptible  Blending  in  Nature. 
The  Fact  of  the  Present  Existence  of  Distinct  Species. 
Sterility  of  Hybrids. 
Geological  Species  Distinct. 
The  Intermediate  Forms  not  Found. 
The  Gradation  Docs  not  Begin  with  the  Lowest  Forms. 
Four  Kingdoms  from  the  Beginning. 
The  New  Species  Began  with  the  Giants. 
The  Gaps  Fatal  to  the  Theory. 
The  Abyss  Between  Death  and  Life. 
The  Gulf  Between  the  Plant  and  the  Animal. 
The  Gaps  Between  Species  Which  will  not  Breed  Together.. 
The  Gaps  Between  Air  Breathers  and  Water  Breathers,  &c. 
The  Great  Gulf  Between  the  Brute  and  the  Man. 

Natural  Selection  Could  not  Have  Deprived  a  Monkey  of 
Hair. 

Nor  Have  Given  a  Human  Brain. 

The  Brain- Worker  Contravenes  Natural  Selection  at  Every 

Step. 
Civilization  the  Contradiction  of  Natural  Selection. 
Morality  and  Religion  the  Direct  Contraries  of  Natural 

Selection. 
Tendency  Immoral,  Degrading,  and  Atheistic. 


Vi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  III. 
Is  God  Everybody,  and  Everybody  God?    .         .      91 

Pantheism  Described. 
An  Antiquated  Hindooism. 
A  Jesuitical  Atheism. 
Grossly  Immoral. 
A  Practical  Atheism^ 


CHAPTER  IV. 
Have  We  Any  Need  of  the  Bible?     .        .        .112 

Civilization  and  the  Bible. 
Revelation  Not  Impossible. 
The  Mythical  Theory. 
The  Inner  Light. 
Many  Ignorant  of  God. 
Heathen  Morality — Plato's. 
Infidel  Morality — Paine's. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Who  Wrote  the  New  Testament?        .         .         .147 

The  Bible  Not  Just  Like  Any  Other  Book. 

Two  Modes  of  Investigation. 

Did  the  Council  of  Nice  Make  the  Bible? 

The  Mythical  Theory. 

The  Evidence  of  CeUus. 

The  Fragment  Hypothesis. 

The  Bank  Signature  Book. 

Could  the  Now  Testament  be  Corrupted? 


CONTENTS.  Tli 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Is  the  Gospel  Fact  or  Fable  ?      .         .         .         .169 

The  Nature  of  Historical  Evidence;  Letters;  Monuments. 
Contemporary  Letters  of  Peter,  Pliny  and  John. 
Prove  the  Existence  of  Churches. 
And  Their  Worship,  Holiness,  and  Sufferings. 


CHAPTER  VIL  \ 

Can  We  Believe  Christ  and  His  Apostlest 

The  Gospel  a  Unit;  Must  Take  or  Refuse  it  All. 
Apostles'  Testimony  Circumstantial. 
Witnesses  Numerous  and  Independent. 
Confirm  Their  Testimony  with  Their  Blood. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
Prophecy, 210 

Political — Napoleon's — Wrong. 

Presidential  Candidates. 

Draper's  Dogma  of  Youth  and  Decrepitude  of  Nations. 

Statesmen  Prophets. 

General  Claim  for  All  Genius. 

Instances  of  Secular  Prediction : 

Cayotte's  of  the  French  Revolution. 

The  Oracles  of  Apollo. 

Vettius  Valen's  Twelve  Vultures. 

Spencer's  of  the  Disruption  of  the  American 
Union. 

Saint  Malachi's  Prophecies. 

Mohammed's  Prophecies. 

Seneca's  of  the  Discovery  of  America. 

Dante's  of  the  Keformation. 

Plato's  of  Shakespeare. 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

Symbolical  Language  of  Prophecy. 

Anybody  may  Predict  Downfall  of  Nations. 

An  Awful  Truth  if  it  be  True. 

But  Bible  Predictions  Circumstantial — Egypt;  Babylon;  Nineveh; 

Judea. 
Predict  Life  and  Kesurrection. 

rs;  Seven  Churches;  Messiah. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
Moses  and  the  Prophets, 266 

God  the  Author  of  the  Bible. 

Every  Other  Book  Inspired? 

Connection  of  Bible  History  and  Morality. 

Hume's  Sophism.    Miracles  Being  Violations  of  Laws  of 

Nature,  Contrary  to  an  Unalterable  Experience. 
No  Testimony  can  Reach  to  the  Supernatural. 
Records  of  Facts  Not  Judged  by  Your  Notions. 
Rationalistic  Explanation  of  the  Miracles. 
Bible  Account  of  Creation  Unscientific. 
Antiquity  of  Man. 

The  Anachronisms  of  the  Pentateuch. 
Bishop  Colenso's  Blunders : 

The  Universality  of  the  Deluge. 

Joshua  Causing  the  Sun  to  Stand  Still. 

Cain's  Wife. 

Increase  of  Jacob's  Family  in  Egypt. 

The  Number  of  the  First-Bom. 

The  Fourth  Generation. 
'  The  Bishop's  Blunders  in  Camp  Life. 

Sterility  of  the  Wilderness. 

Population  of  the  Promised  Land. 
Modern  Discoveries  in  Bible  Lands 
Egyptian  Monuments  of  Joseph. 


CONTENTS.  IZ 


Assyrian  Ethnology  and  Genesis,  Chaps,  x.  and  xi. 

Sennacherib's  Conquest  of  Palestine. 

Belshazzar's  Kingship. 

The  Moabitic  Inscriptions,  and  Omri  and  Ahab, 

The  Samaritan  Pentateuch. 

The  Character  of  the  Books — Austere. 

Variety  of  "Writers  and  Unity  of  Plan. 

Contained  the  Surveys,  and  the  Laws  of  the  Nation. 

Introduced  New  and  Kepublican  Usages. 

Moses'  Law  in  Advance  of  Modern  Social  Science. 

Testimony  of  the  Jewish  Nation. 

Testimony  of  Christ. 

The  Lost  Books. 

The  Law  Abolished  by  the  Gospel. 

The  Imperfect  Morality  of  Old  Testament. 

Polygamy,  Slavery,  and  Divorce. 

The  Education  of  the  World  a  Gradual  Process. 

The  Imprecations  of  Scripture. 


CHAPTER  X. 

Infidelity  Among  the  Stars,         ....    335 

Scientific  Objections  to  the  Bible. 

The  Infinity  and  Self-Existence  of  the  Universe. 

Disproved  by 

Its  Evident  Limits. 

Its  Composite  Materials. 

Its  Steady  Loss  of  Heat. 
Bufibn's  Explosion  of  Planets. 
The  Nebular  Theories. 
The  Fiction  of  Homogeneous  Matter. 
The  Contradictory  Theories. 
The  Perpetual  Motion  Machine. 


CONTENTS. 


Contrary  to  Facts  of  Astronomy. 
Contradicted  by  Astronomers. 
Impossibility  of  any  Cosmogony. 


CHAPTER  XL 
Daylight  Before  Sunrise, 378 

Infidel  Objections  to  Genesis. 
The  Hindoo  Chronology. 
The  Egyptian  Chronology. 
The  Bible  Age  of  the  Earth. 
The  Solid  Firmament. 
Light  Before  the  Sun. 


CHAPTER  XII. 
Telescopic  Views  of  Scripture,  ....    423 

The  Source  of  the  Water  of  the  Deluge. 

The  Stars  Fighting  Against  Sisera. 

The  Astronomers  of  the  Great  Pyramid. 

The  Grand  Motion  of  the  Sun. 

The  Formation  of  Dew. 

The  Multitude  of  the  Stars. 

The  DjBscent  of  the  Heavenly  City. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
Science  or  Faith? 4G6 

Mu«t  Faith  Fade  Before  Science  ?• 
Scientists  as  Partial  as  Other  People. 
Have  no  Such  Certainty  aa  is  Claimed. 


CONTENTS. 

1.  Mathematical  Errors. 
The  Infinite  Half  Inch,  Etc. 

The  Doctrine  of  Chances. 

No  Mathematical  Figures  in  Nature. 

The  French  Metric  System. 

The  Lowell  Turbine  Wheel. 

2.  Errors  of  Astronomy, 
Kant's  Predictions  ;  Le  Yerrier's. 
Herschel's  Enumeration  of  Errors. 

Sun's  Distance;  Other  Measurements. 

The  Moon's  Structure  and  Influence. 

La  Place's  Proposed  Improvement. 

The  Sun's  Structure,  Heat,  Etc. 

The  Sizes,  Distances,  and  Densities  of  the  Planets. 

Errors  About  the  Nebulae. 

Errors  About  Comets. 

The  Cosmical  Ether. 

The  Cold  of  Infinite  Space. 

From  This  Chaos  Springs  the  Theory  of  Development. 
3.  Errors  of  Geology. 

No  Fact  of  Geology  Anti-Biblical. 

All  Anti-Biblical  Theories  Based  on  an  If. 

No  Geological  Measure  of  Time. 

All  Calculations  of  Time  by  Geologists,  which  Have  Been 
Tested,  Have  Proved  Erroneous — the  Danish  Bogs; 
the  Swiss  Lake  Villages;  Horner's  Nile  Pottery;  the 
Kaised  Beaches  of  Scotland;  Lyell's  Blunder  in  the 
Delta  of  the  Mississippi;  Sir  Wm.  Thompson's  Ex- 
posure of  the  Absurdity  of  the  Evolutionists'  Demands 
for  Time. 

Confiicting  Geological  Theories— the  Wernerian,  Huttonian, 
and  Diluvian  Theories;  the  Catastrophists  and  Pro- 
gressionists; Eleven  Theories  of  Earthquakes;  Nine 
Theories  of  Mountains;  False  Geology  of  America; 
Scotland  Kicked  About  Too. 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

4.  Errors  of  Zoology. 

Lamarek's  Yestiges;  Treraaux;    Darwin's  Contradictions ; 

Huxley;  Mivart,  and  Wallace. 
Blunders  of  the  French  Academy,  Denouncing  Quinine, 

Vaccination,  Lightning  Kods,  and  Steam  Engines. 
Uncertainty  of  Science  Increases  in  Human  Concerns. 
Second-hand  Science  Founded  on  Somebody's  Say  So. 

5.  All  Science  Founded  on  Faith. 
Reason  Also  Based  on  Faith. 
This  Life  Depends  on  Faith. 

We  Demand  Truths  of  which  Science  is  Ignorant. 
AH  Our  Chief  Concerrs  in  the  Domain  of  Faith. 
Religion  the  Most  Experimental  of  the  Sciences. 
The  Only  Science  wnich  can  Make  You  Happy. 
Try  for  Yourself. 


PKEFACE. 


This  is  not  so  much  a  volume  upon  the  Evidences  of  Christianity, 
as  an  examination  of  the  Evidences  of  Infielity.  When  the  Infidel 
tells  us  that  Christianity  is  false,  and  asks  us  to  reject  it,  he  is  bound 
of  course  to  provide  us  with  something  belter  and  truer  instead; 
under  penalty  of  being  cons"dered  a  knave  trying  to  swindle  us  out 
of  our  birthright,  and  laughed  at  as  a  fool,  for  imagining  that  he 
could  persuade  mankind  to  live  and  die  without  religion.  Suppose 
he  had  proved  to  the  world's  satisfaction  that  all  religion  is  a  hoax, 
and  all  men  professing  it  are  liars,  how  does  that  comfort  me  in  my 
hour  of  sorrow?  Scoffing  will  not  sustain  a  man  in  his  solitude, 
when  he  has  nobody  to  scoflf  at ;  and  disbelief  is  only  a  bottomless 
tub,  which  will  not  float  me  across  the  dark  river.  If  Infidels  in- 
tend to  convert  the  world,  they  must  give  us  some  positive  system 
of  truth  which  we  can  believe,  and  venerate,  and  trust. 

A  glimmering  idea  of  this  necessity  seems  lately  to  have  dawned 
upon  some  of  them.  It  is  quite  possible  that  they  have  also  felt 
the  want  of  something  for  their  own  souls  to  believe;  for  an  Infi- 
del  ha3  a  soul,  a  poor,  hungry,  starved  sou),  just  like  other  men.  At 
any  rate,  having  grown  tired  of  pelting  the  Church  with  the  dirt- 
balls  of  Voltaire  and  Paine,  thoy  begin  to  acknowledge  that  it  is, 
after  all,  an  institution;  and  that  the  Bible  is  an  influential  book, 
both  popular  and  useful  in  its  way.  Mankind,  it  seems,  will  have 
a  Church  and  a  Bible  of  some  sort;  why  not  go  to  work  and  make 
a  Church  and  a  Bible  of  their  own  ?  Accordingly  they  have  gone  to 
work,  and  in  a  very  short  time  have  prepared  a  variety  of  ungodly 
religion',  so  various  that  the  worldly-minded  man  who  can  not  be 
suited  with  one  to  his  taste  must  be  very  hard  to  please.  Discord- 
ant and  contradictory  in  their  positive  statements,  they  are  agreed 
only  in  negatives;  denying  the  God  of  the  Bible,  the  resurrection 
of  the  dead,  and  judgment  to  come.  Nevertheless  each  discoverer 
or  constructor  presents  his  system  to  the  world  with  great  confi- 
dence, large  claims  to  superior  benevolence,    vast  pretensions  to 

(1) 


Z  PREFACE. 

learning  and  science,  and  no  little  cant  about  duty  and  piety. 
"Wonderful  to  tell,  some  of  them  are  very  fond  of  clothing  their 
ungodliness  in  the  language  of  Scripture. 

No  pains  are  spared  to  secure  the  wide  spread  of  these  notions. 
Prominent  Infidels  are  invited  to  deliver  courses  of  scientific  lec- 
tures, in  which  the  science  is  made  the  medium  of  conveying  the 
Infidelity.  Scientific  books,  novels,  magazines,  daily  newspapers, 
and  common  school  books,  are  all  enlisted  in  the  work.  The  dis- 
ciples of  Infidelity  are  numerous  and  zealous.  It  would  be  hard  to 
find  a  factory,  boarding-house,  steamboat  or  hotel  where  twelve  per- 
sons are  employed,  without  an  Infidel;  and  harder  still  to  find  an 
Infidel  who  will  not  use  his  influence  to  poison  his  associates. 

These  systems  are  well  adapted  to  the  depraved  tastes  of  the  age. 
The  business  man,  whose  whole  soul  is  set  on  money-making  and 
spending,  is  right  glad  to  meet  the  Secularist,  who  will  prove  to 
him  on  scientific  principles,  that  a  man  is  much  profited  b}'^  gaining 
the  whole  world,  even  at  the  risk  of  his  soul,  if  he  has  such  a  thing. 
The  young  and  ill-instructed  professor  of  Christianity,  whose  long- 
ings for  forbidden  joys  are  strong,  has  a  natural  kindliness  toward 
Rationalism,  which  befogs  the  serene  light  of  God's  holy  law,  and 
gives  the  directing  power  to  his  own  inner  liking.  The  sentimental 
young  lady,  who  would  recoil  from  the  grossness  of  the  Deist,  is 
attracted  by  the  poetry  of  Pantheism.  Infidelity  has  had,  in  con- 
sequenie,  a  degree  of  success  very  little  suspected  by  simple-minded 
pastors  and  parents,  and  which  is  often  discovered  too  late  for 
remedy. 

This  book  is  written  to  expose  the  folly  of  some  of  these  novel 
systems  of  Infidelity — leaving  others  to  show  their  wickedness.  It 
may  surprise  some  who  would  glory  in  being  esteemed  fiends,  to 
learn  that  they  are  only  foi>ls.  If  they  should  be  awakened  now 
to  a  sense  of  the  ab.^urdities  which  they  cherish  as  philosophy,  it 
might  save  them  from  awaking  another  day  to  the  shame  and  ever- 
lasting contempt  of  the  Universe. 

I  have  not  taken  up  all  the  cavils  of  Infidelity.  Their  name  is 
Legion.  Nor  have  I  troubled  my  readers  with  any  which  they  are 
not  likely  to  hear.,  Leaving  the  sleeping  dogs  to  lie,  I  have  noticed 
only  such  as  I  have  known  to  bark  and  bite  in  my  own  neighbor- 
hood, and  know  to  be  rife  here  in  the  West.  They  are  stated,  as 
nearly  as  possible,  in  the  words  in  which  I  have  heard  them  in 
public  debate,  or  in  private  conversation  with  gentlemen  of  Infidel 


PREFACE.  3 

principles.  I  have  made  no  references  to  books  or  writers  on  that 
side,  save  to  such  as  I  am  assured  were  the  sources  of  their  senti- 
ments. In  such  cases  I  have  named  and  quoted  the  authors. 
Where  no  such  quotations  are  noticed  it  will  be  understood  that  I 
am  responsible  for  the  fairness  with  which  I  have  represented  the 
opinions  which  are  examined.  It  is  not  my  design  to  fight  men  of 
straw.  j^ 

Every  historical  or  scientific  fact  adduced  in  support  of  the  argu- 
ments here  used  is  confirmed  by  reference  to  the  proper  authority. 
But  it  has  not  been  deemed  needful  to  crowd  the  pages  with  refer- 
ences to  the  works  of  Christian  apologists.  The  Cliristian  scholar 
does  not  need  such  references ;  while  to  those  for  whose  benefit  I 
write,  their  names  carry  no  authority,  and  their  arguments  are  gen- 
erally quite  unknown.  One  great  object  of  my  labor  will  be  gained 
if  I  shall  succeed  in  awaking  the  spirit  of  inquiry  among  my  read- 
ers, to  such  an  extent  as  to  lead  them  to  a  prayerful  and  patient 
perusal  of  several  of  the  works  named  on  the  next  page.  They 
have  heard  only  one  side  of  the  question,  and  will  be  surprised  at 
their  own  ignorance  of  matters  which  they  ought  to  have  known^ 

Books  on  the  Evidences  are  not  generally  circulated.  Ministers 
perhaps  have  some  volumes  in  their  libraries ;  but  in  a  hundred 
houses,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  half  a  dozen  containing  as  many  as 
would  give  an  inquiring  youth  a  fair  view  of  the  historical  evi- 
dences of  the  truth  of  the  gospel.  Nor,  where  they  are  to  be  found, 
are  they  generally  read.  Being  deemed  heavy  reading,  the  maga- 
zine, or  the  newspaper  is  preferred.  Ministers  do  not  in  general 
devote  enough  of  their  time  to  such  sound  teaching  as  will  stop  the 
mouths  of  gainsayers.  I  have  been  assured  by  skeptical  gentlemen, 
who  in  the  early  part  of  their  lives  had  attended  church  regularly 
for  twentj^-two  years,  that  during  all  that  time  they  had  never 
heard  a  single  discourse  on  the  Evidences.  Moreover,  the  pr  tean 
forms  of  Infidelity  are  so  various,  and  many  of  its  present  positions 
so  novel,  that  books  or  discourses  prepared  only  twenty  years  ago 
miss  the  mark ;  and  rather  expose  to  the  charge  of  misrepresenta- 
tion, than  produce  c  nviction.  New  books  on  Infidelity  are  needed 
for  every  goneration. 

The  lectures  expanded  into  this  volume  were  delivered  in  Cin- 
cinnati, in  1858.  Replying  to  different,  and  discordant  systems  of 
error,  whose  only  bond  is  opposition  to  the  gospel,  Ihey  are  neces- 
sarily somewhat  disconnected.      No  attempt  was  made   to  mold 


4  PREFACE. 

them  into  a  suit  of  royal  armor,  but  merely  to  select  a  few  smooth 
pebbles  from  the  brook  of  truth,  which  any  Christian  lad  might 
sling  at  the  giant  defiers  of  the  armies  of  the  living  God.  Having 
proved  acceptable  for  this  purpose,  and  a  steadily  increasing  demand 
for  repeated  editions  wearing  out  the  original  plates,  the  author 
has  been  requested  by  British  and  American  publishers  to  revise 
the  work  in  the  light  of  the  recent  discoveries  of  science.  This  he 
has  at  empted ;  with  what  success  the  reader  will  judge.  Conscious 
of  its  many  defects,  yet  grateful  to  God  for  the  good  which  he  has 
done  to  many  souls  by  its  instrumentalit}',  the  author  again  com- 
mends the  book  to  the  Father  of  Lights,  praying  him  to  use  it  as  a 
mirror  to  flash  such  a  ray  of  light  into  many  dark  souls  as  may  lead 
them  into  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the 
face  of  Jesus  Christ. 
San  Francisco,  March  30,  1875. 


The  author  having  been  repeatedly  asked  by  inquirers  for  the 
names  of  books  on  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,  subjoins  a  list  of 
th  »8e  easily  accessible  in  the  West.  It  is  not  supposed  that  any 
one  inquirer  will  read  all  these;  but  it  is  well  to  road  more  than 
one,  since  the  evidence  is  cumulative,  and  it  is  impossible  for  any 
writer  to  present  the  whole.  Having  a  list  of  several  works,  the 
inquirer  who  can  not  obtain  one  may  be  able  to  procure  another. 
There  are  many  other  works  on  the  Evidences  on  the  shelves  of  all 
our  principal  booksellers. 

Modern  Atheism,  by  James  Buchanan,  LL.  D. 

Typical  Forms  and  Special  Ends  in  Creation,  by  James  McCosh, 

LL.  D.,  and  George  Dickie,  M.  D. 
Religion  and  Geology,  Edward  Hitchcock,  LL.  D. 
The  Architecture  of  the  Heamns,  J.  P.  Nichol,  LL.  D 
The  Christiayi  Philosopher,  Thomas  Dick,  LL.  D. 
Natural  Theology,  William  Paley,  D.  D. 
The  Analogy  of  Religion,  Natural  and  Revealed,  to  the  (Constitution 

and  (Jourse  of  Nature,  Joseph  Butler,  D.  C.  L. 
The  Bridgewater  Treatises,  Whewell,  Chalmers,  Kidd,  &c. 
The  Cumprehensive  Commentary,  William  Jenks  D.  D. 
Th£  Cause  and  Cure  of  Infidelity,  Rev.  David  Nelson. 
A  View  of  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,  William  Paley,  D.  D 
The  Eclipse  of  Faith^  ascribed  to  Henry  Rogers. 


PREFACE.  5 

The  Restoration  of  Belief  ascribed  to  Isaac  Taylor. 

Lectures  on  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,  University  of  Virginia. 

The  Divine  Authority  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  Asserted^  J 

Leland,  D.  D. 
The  Bible  Commentary. 
An  Apology  for  the  Bible,  in  a  Series  of  Letters  to  Thomas  Paine,  R. 

Watson. 
A  View  of  the  Internal  Evidence  of  the  Christian  Religion,  S.  Jenyns. 
A  Letter  to  O.  West,  Esq.,  on  the   Conversion  of  St.  Paul,  Lord 

Lyttleton. 
Observations  on  the  History  and  Evidence  of  the  Resurrection  of 

Jesics  Christ,  Gilbert  West,  Esq. 
Difficulties  of  Lifidelity,  Faber. 

Dissertations  on  the  Prophecies,  Thos.  Newton,  D.  D. 
An  Introduction  to  the  Critical  Study  of  the  Scriptures^  T.H.  Home, 

Vol.  I. 
The  Evidences  of  Christianity,  Charles  Petit  Mcllvaine,  D.  D. 
Rawlinson^s  Historical  Evidences. 
Modern  Skepticism,  by  Joseph  Barker. 
Haley'' s  Discrepancies  of  the  Bible,  W.  G.  Holmes,  Chicago. 
The  Superhuman  Origin  of  the  Bible,  Rogers. 
Christianity  and  Positivism,,  McCosh. 
The  Supernatural  in  Relation  to  the  Natural^  McCosh. 
Aids  to  Faith,  Appleton  &  Co. 
Modern  Skepticism,  Randolph  &  Son. 
Modern  Doubt,  Christlieb. 
Alexander's  Evidences  of  Christianity. 


CHAPTER   I 


Did  The  World    Make  Itself? 

^% 

Understand,  ye  brutish  among  the  people  ; 
And,  ye  fools,  when  will  ye  be  wise  f 
He  that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not  hear?  :>^J^1 
He  that  formed  the  eye,  shall  he  not  see  9         ^^^2;:^- 
He  that  chastiseth  the  heathen,  shall  he  he  not  correct  f 
He  that  teacheth  man  knowledge,  shall  he  Tiot  know  ? — Psalm 
xciv.  8,  9.  , 


Has  the  Creator  of  the  world  common  sense  ?  Did  he 
know  what  he  was  about  in  making  it?  Had  he  any  object 
in  view  in  forming  it?  Does  he  know  what  is  going  on  in 
it?  Does  he  care  whether  it  answers  any  purpose  or  not? 
Strange  questions  you  will  say ;  yet  we  need  to  ask  a 
a  stranger  question:  Had  the  world  a  Creator,  or  did  it 
make  itself?  There  are  persons  who  say  it  did,  and  who 
declare  that  the  Bible  sets  out  with  a  lie  when  it  says, 
that  "In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth."  Whereas,  say  they,  •*  We  know  that  matter  is 
eternal,  and  the  world  is  wholly  composed  of  matter; 
therefore,  the  heavens  and  the  earth  are  eternal,  never  had 
a  beginning  nor  a  Creator." 

But,  however  fully  the  atheist  may  know  that  matter  is 
eternal,  we  do  not  know  any  such  thing,  and  must  be 
allowed  to  ask,  How  do  you  know?  As  you  are  not  eternal, 
we  can  not  take  it  on  your  word. 

(7) 


8  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF  ? 

The  only  reason  which  anybody  ever  ventured  for  this 
amazing  assertion  is  this,  that  "all  philosophers  agree  that 
matter  is  naturally  indestructible  by  any  human  power. 
You  may  boil  water  into  steam,  but  it  is  all  there  in  the 
steam ;  or  burn  coal  into  gas,  ashes,  and  tar,  but  it  is  all  in 
the  gas,  ashes,  and  tar  ;  you  may  change  the  outward  form 
as  much  as  you  please,  but  you  can  not  destroy  the  sub- 
stance of  anything.  Wherefore,  as  matter  is  indestructible, 
it  must  be  eternal." 

Profound  reasoning!  Here  is  a  brick  fresh  from  the 
kiln.  It  will  last  for  a  thousand  years  to  comej  therefore, 
it  has  existed  for  a  thousand  years  past  I 

The  foundation  of  the  argument  is  as  rotten  as  the 
superstructure.  It  is  not  agreed  among  all  philosophers 
that  matter  is  naturally  indestructible,  for  the  very  satis- 
factory reason  that  none  of  them  can  tell  what  matter  in 
its  own  nature  is.  All  that  t!hey  can  undertake  to  say  is, 
that  they  have  observed  certain  properties  of  matter,  and, 
among  these,  that  "  it  is  indestructible  by  any  operation  to 
which  it  can  be  subjected  in  the  ordinary  course  of  circum- 
stances observed  at  the  surface  of  the  globe."*  The  very 
utmost  which  any  man  can  assert  in  this  matter  is  a 
negative,  a  want  of  knowledge,  or  a  want  of  power.  He  can 
say,  "Human  power  can  not  destroy  matter;"  and,  if  he 
pleases,  he  may  reason  thence  that  human  power  did  not 
create  it.  But  to  assert  that  matter  is  eternal  because  man 
can  not  destroy  it,  is  as  if  a  child  should  try  to  beat  the 
cylinder  of  a  steam  engine  to  pieces,  and,  failing  in  the  at- 
tempt, should  say,  "I  am  sure  this  cylinder  existed  from 
eternity,  because  I  am  unable  to  destroy  it." 

But  not  only  is  the  assertion  of  the  eternity  of  matter 
unproven,  and  impossible  to  be  proved,  it  is  capable  of  the 
most  demonstrable  refutation,  by    one  of  the  recent  dis- 


*Reid'8  Chemistry,  II.  §  37. 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  9 

coveries  of  science.  The  principle  of  the  argument  is 
so  plain  that  a  child  of  four  years  old  can  understand  it. 
It  is  simply  this,  that  all  substances  in  heaven  and  earth 
are  compounded  of  several  elements;  but  no  compound  can 
be  eternal. 

We  say  to  our  would-be  philosophers,  When  you  tell  us 
that  matter  is  eternal,  how  does  that  account  for  the  for- 
mation of  this  world  ?  What  is  this  matter  you  speak  of? 
This  world  consists  not  of  a  philosophical  abstraction  called 
matter,  nor  yet  of  one  substance  known  by  that  name,  but 
of  a  great  variety  of  material  substances,  oxygen,  hydrogen, 
carbon,  sulphur,  iron,  aluminum,  and  some  fifty  others 
already  discovered.*  Now,  which  of  these  is  the  eterna- 
matter  you  speak  of?  Is  it  iron,  or  sulphur,  or  clay,  or 
oxygen?  If  it  is  any  one  of  them,  where  did  the  others 
come  from?  Did  a  mass  of  iron,  becoming  discontented 
with  its  gravity,  suddenly  metamorphose  itself  into  a  cloud 
of  gas,  or  into  a  pail  of  water?  Or  are  they  all  eternal? 
Have  we  fifty-seven  eternal  beings?  Are  they  all  eternal 
in  their  present  combinations?  or  is  it  only  the  single 
elements  that  are  eternal  ?  You  see  that  your  hypothesis — 
that  matter  is  eternal — gives  me  no  light  on  the  formation 
of  this  world,  which  is  not  a  shapeless  mass  of  a  philosophi- 
cal abstraction  called  matter,  but  a  regular  and  beautiful 
building,  composed  of  a  great  variety  of  matters.  Was  it 
so  from  eternity  ?  No  man  who  was  ever  in  a  quarry,  or  a 
gravel  pit,  will  say  so,  much  less  one  who  has  the  least 
smattering  of  chemistry  or  geology.  Do  you  assert  the 
eternity  of  the  fifty-seven  single  substances,  either  separate 
or  combined  in  some  other  way  than  we  now  find  them  in 
the  rocks,  and  rivers,  and  atmosphere  of  the  earth  ?  Then 
how  came  they  to  get  together  at  all,  and  particularly  how 
did  they  put  themselves  in  their  present  shapes  ? 

f  Johnson's  Turner's  Chemistry,  §  341. 


10  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

Eacli  of  them  is  a  piece  of  matter  of  which  inertia  is  a 
primary  and  inseparable  property.  Matter  of  itseJf  can  not 
begin  to  move,  or  assume  a  quiescent  state  after  being  put 
in  motion. 

Will  you  tell  us  that  the  fifty-seven  primary  e'ements 
danced  about  till  the  air,  and  sea,  and  earth,  somehow  jum- 
bled themselves  together  into  the  present  shape  of  this 
glorious  and  beautiful  world,  with  all  its  regularity  of  day 
and  night,  and  summer  and  winter,  with  all  its  beautiful 
flowers  and  lofty  trees,  with  all  its  variety  of  birds,  and 
beasts,  and  fishes?  To  bring  the  matter  down  to  the  level 
of  the  intellect  of  the  most  stupid  pantheist,  tell  us  in  plain 
English, /)i6?  the  paving  stones  make  themselves?  For  the 
paving  stones  are  made  out  of  a  dozen  different  chemical 
constituents,  and  each  one  is  built  up  more  ingeniously  than 
the  house  you  live  in.  Now^  did  iJte  paving  stones  make 
themselves? 

No  conviction  of  the  human  mind  is  more  certain  than 
the  belief  that  every  combination  of  matter  proves  the  ex- 
istence of  a  combiner,  that  every  house  has  had  a  builder, 
and  that  every  machine  has  had  a  maker.  No  matter  how 
simple  the  combination,  if  it  be  only  two  laths  fastened  to- 
gether by  a  nail,  or  two  bricks  cemented  with  mortar,  or 
the  sole  of  an  old  pegged  boot,  all  the  atheists  in  the  world 
could  not  convince  you  that  those  two  laths,  or  those  two. 
bricks,  or  those  two  bits  of  leather  existed  in  such  a  com- 
bination from  all  eternity.  If  any  wise  philosopher  tried 
to  persuade  you  that  for  anything  you  could  tell  they  might 
have  been  always  so,  you  would  reply,  "No,  sir!  You  can't 
cram  such  stuff  down  my  throat.  Even  a  child's  common 
sense  shows  him  that  those  two  laths  were  not  always  so 
nailed  together;  that  those  two  bricks  were  not  always  so 
placed,  one  on  the  top  of  the  other;  and  that  those  two 
pieces  of  old  sole  leather  were  not  always  pegged  together 
in  the  sole  of  a  boot."     There  is  no  conviction  more  irre- 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  11 

sistible  than   our  belief  that  no  compound  can  jpossihly  he 
eternal. 

But  the  universe  is  the  greatest  of  all  compounds.  Ev- 
erything in  it  is  compound.  Chemists  speak  of  simple 
substances,  or  elements  of  matter,  and  it  is  well  enough  to 
separate  the  elements  of  things  in  our  thoughts,  for  the 
sake  of  distinct  consideration,  and  to  speak  of  the  proper- 
ties of  pure  oxygen,  or  of  pure  hydrogen,  or  of  pure  car- 
bon, or  of  pure  gold,  or  of  pure  iron,  or  of  pure  silver. 
But  then  we  should  always  remember  that  there  is  nothing 
pure  in  the  world,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  in  nature  as 
any  substance  consisting  only  of  a  single  element,  pure  and 
uncombined  with  others.  Just  as  your  gold  eagle  is  not 
pure  gold,  but  alloyed  with  copper,  everything  in  nature  is 
alloyed.  Everything  in  the  heavens  above,  and  in  the  earth 
beneath,  and  in  the  waters  under  the  earth,  is  compound. 
The  air  you  breathe,  simple  as  it  seems,  is  composed  of 
three  gases,  and  is  besides  full  of  what  Huxley  calls  "a 
stirabout"  of  millions  of  seeds  of  animalculae  and  motes 
of  dust  visible  in  the  sunbeam.  That  hydrant  water  you 
are  about  to  swallow  is  a  rich  aquarium  full  of  all  manner 
of  monsters,  which  the  oxy- hydrogen  microscope  will  ex- 
hibit to  your  terrified  gaze,  devouring  each  other  alive. 
Should  you  get  rid  of  them  by  evaporating  your  water,  your 
chemist  will  tell  you  that  still  your  pure  water  must  be  a 
compound  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen.    There  is  no  help  for  it. 

Many  years  ago  some  astronomers  fancied  they  had 
found  clouds,  or  nebulae,  of  gas,  quite  simple  and  uncom- 
pounded  with  anything  else,  a  great  many  millions  of  miles 
away  in  the  sky.  They  were  so  very  far  away  that  they 
thought  nobody  would  ever  be  able  to  fly  so  far  to  bottle 
up  a  specimen  of  that  gas  and  bring  it  back  here  to  earth 
and  "analyze  it,  to  find  out  whether  it  was  pure  and  simple, 
or  compound.  So  they  felt  quite  safe  in  affirming  that 
there  was  the  genuine,  simple,  homogeneous  gas,  in  the  neb- 


12  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

ulae,  with  which  Almighty  God  had  nothing  whatever  to 
do,  but  which  had  first  made  itself  and  then  had  condensed 
into  our  present  world.  But  unfortunately  for  this  bril- 
liant discovery  the  spectroscope  opened  windows  into  the 
ncbul83,  and  showed  very  plainly  that  they  were  on  fire; 
and  fire  is  a  compound;  it  can  not  burn  without  fuel  and 
something  to  support  the  combustion;  so  that  settled  the 
alleged  simplicity  of  the  nebulae.  Jt  is  now  demonstrated, 
therefore,  that  every  known  substance  existing  in  nature  is 
a  compound,  and  therefore  can  not  be  eternal.  And  the 
whole  is  not  greater  than  the  sum  of  its  parts.  No  num- 
ber of  finite  existences  can  be  eternal.  The  universe,  then, 
can  not  be  eternal. 

Suppose,  however,  that,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  we 
should  grant  our  atheistic  world-builder  his  materials,  away 
off  beyond  the  rings  of  Saturn,  or  the  orbit  of  Uranus 
(since  he  seems  to  like  to  have  his  quarries  a  good  way  off 
from  his  building),  would  he  be  any  nearer  the  completion 
of  his  world-making?      As   Cornwallis    declared  that  the 
conquest  of  India  resolved  itself  u  timately  into  a  question 
of  bullocks,  the  prime  consideration  in  the  construction  of 
the  world,  after  you  have  got  your  materials,  is  that  of 
transportation.     When  one  beholds  the  three  great  stones 
in  the  temple  of  Baalbec,  each  weighing  eleven  hundred 
tons,  built  into  the  wall  twenty  feet  high,  and  a  fourth  in 
the  quarry,  a  mile  away,  nearly  ready  for  removal,  he  asks, 
"How  did  the  builders  move  those  immense  stones,  and 
raise   them  to   their  places?"     And  when  we  behold  the 
quarry  out  of  which  these  stones  were  taken,  and  all  the 
other  quarries  of  the  world,  and  all  the  everlasting  moun- 
tains, and  the  whole  of  this  solid  earth,  and  boundless  sea, 
brought,  as  our  theorists  affirm,  from  far  beyond  the  orbit 
of  the  most  distant  planet,  we  raise  the  question  of  trans- 
portation, and    demand   some  account  of   the  wagon  and 
team  which  hauled  them  to  their  places.     We  can  not  get 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  13 

rid  of  the  necessity  for  transportation  by  evaporating  the 
building  stones  into  gas,  for  a  world  of  gas  weighs  just  as 
many  tons  as  the  world  made  out  of  it.  Before  we  can 
make  a  world  we  must  have  power;  but  we  can  never  get 
power  out  of  the  world  to  build  itself  The  atheists'  world 
is  only  a  great  machine.  The  first  law  of  mechanics  is 
that  action  and  reaction  are  equal ;  consequently  machinery 
can  never  create  power.  You  will  never  lift  yourself  by 
pulling  at  your  boot-straps  j  much  less  can  a  machine  lift 
and  carry  itself. 

It  is  no  matter  how  big  you  make  the  wheels  of  your 
machine,  as  big  as  the  orbits  of  the  planets  if  you  like, 
still  it  is  only  a  machine,  unless  it  has  a  mind  in  it;  and 
your  big  machine  can  no  more  create  power  than  a  little 
machine  as  small  as  a  lady's  watch.  Nor  does  it  make  the 
least  difi'erence  in  respect  to  making  power,  of  what  mate- 
rials your  perpetual  motion  peddler  makes  his  machine — 
whether  of  a  skein  of  silk  on  a  reel  in  a  bottle,  or  of  steel 
and  zinc  electro  magnets  running  upon  diamond  points,  or 
whether  he  melts  up  his  steel,  and  zinc,  and  diamonds  into 
red  hot  fire  mist;  it  is  still  only  a  machine,  made  of  these 
materials,  as  destitute  of  power  as  the  smaller  machines/ 
made  out  of  it.  The  atheists'  universe  is  only  a  big  ma- 
chine, and  no  machine  can  create  power,  no  more  than  a 
paving  stone. 

It  has  been,  however,  proposed  to  manufacture  power  by 
the  law  of  gravitation,  according  to  which  all  bodies  attract 
each  other,  directly  in  proportion  to  their  mass,  and  in- 
versely as  the  square  of  their  distances.  This  law  appears 
to  prevail  as  far  as  our  observation  extends  through  space ; 
and  our  world  builders  affirm  that  it  must  have  operated 
eternally,  and  that  not  only  were  the  separate  parts  of  our 
earth  thus  drawn  together,  but  that  all  the  orbs  of  heaven 
were  caused  to  revolve  under  its  influence. 

Suppose,  however,  we  grant  that  matter  was  eternal,  and 


14  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

the  force  of  gravitation  eternally  operating  upon  it,  would- 
that  Bufficiontly  account  for  the  building  up  of  even  our 
own  little  planetary  system?     By  no  means. 

The  unresisted  force  of  gravitation  would,  in  far  loss  than 
an  eternity,  draw  all  things  together  toward  the  center  of 
gravity  of  the  universe.  Wo  should  not  have  separate  stars, 
and  suns,  and  planets,  and  moons,  revolving  in  orderly  or- 
bits, but  one  vast  mass  of  matter,  in  which  all  motion  had 
long  since  ceased.  There  must  be  some  power  of  resist- 
ance to  gravitation,  and  nicely  balanced  against  it,  a  centri- 
fugal force — no  matter  whether  you  call  it  heat,  light,  or 
electricity,  or  by  any  other  name  from  which  balance  of 
power  the  movements  of  the  universe  are  regulated.  But 
here  again  wo  arrive  at  tho  same  conclusion  from  the  bal- 
ance of  power  to  which  we  were  before  driven  by  the  com- 
bination of  matter. — regulated  power  proclaims  a  regulator, 
a  governor.     Power  belongeth  unto  God. 

In  world-building  we  need  not  only  a  quarry  of  mate- 
rials, and  power  for  transportation,  but  a  head  to  plan  their 
arrangement.  For,  as  ten  thousand  loads  of  brick  and 
stone  dumped  down  higgledy  piggledy  will  not  build  a 
house,  neither  will  ten  thousand  millions  of  materials 
poured  into  a  chaos  make  a  world  like  this  earth,  arranged 
in  order  and  beauty.  It  is  grossly  absurd  to  imagine  that 
tho  inanimate  materials  of  the  earth  arranged  thomselvcs 
in  their  present  orderly  structure. 

Absurd  as  it  seems  to  every  man  of  common  sense,  there 
are  persons  claiming  to  bo  philosophers  who  not  only  assert 
that  thoy  did,  but  will  tell  you  how  they  did  it.  One  class 
of  them  think  thoy  have  found  it  out  by  supposing  every 
thing  in  tho  universe  reduced  to  very  fine  powder,  consist- 
ing of  very  small  grains,  which  they  call  atoms;  or,  if  that 
is  not  fine  enough,  into  gas,  of  which  it  is  supposed  the 
particles  are  too  fine  t^  bo  perceived;  and  then  by  different 
arrangements  of  these  atoms,  according  to  tho  laws  of  at- 


DID  TUE  WOIU.I)  MAKE  ITSELF?  15 

traction  and  el(Htri(tity,  tho  vnriouH  elements  of  the  world 
wore  niatlo,  and  arranged  in  its  prenent  lorin. 

Suppose  wo  grant  tliin  gassy  supposition,  that  the  world 
millions  of  nges  ago  existed  as  a  eloud  of  atoms,  does  that 
bring  us  Jiiiy  nearer  the  ol»je(!t  of  g(^tting  rid  of  a.  Creator 
thjin  before?  The  atoms  must  be  material,  if  a  mate- 
rial world  is  to  Ix;  madi;  iVom  them  ;  and  ho  they  munt  be 
extended  ;  each  one  of  tln-m  must  have  l(>ngth,  ])readlh 
and  thi(!kness.  The  atheist,  then,  lias  only  multiplied  his 
difHeultioH  a  million  timcB,  by  pounding  u[>  the  world  into 
atoms,  whicdi  are  only  little  bits  of  the  j)aving  stones  ho 
intends  to  make  out  of  them.  Kacli  bit  of  the  paving 
Btone,  no  matter  how  small  you  break  it,  remains  just  as 
incapable  of  making  itself,  or  moving  itself,  as  was  tho 
whole  stont!  composed  of  all  these  bits.  So  wo  are  landed 
back  again  at  the  sublime  question,  Did  the  paving  stones 
make  thrmsr/vra,  and  move  f./icmsrfvcs? 

Others  will  tell  you  that  njillions  of  years  ago  tho  world 
existed  as  a  vast  eloud  of  fire  mist,  which,  after  a  long 
time,  cooled  down  into  granite,  and  the  granite,  by  dint  of 
eartliquakes,  got  broken  up  on  the  surface,  and  waslied 
with  rain  into  clay  and  soil,  whence  plants  sprang  up  of 
their  own  accord,  and  the  plants  gradually  grew  into  ani- 
mals of  various  kinds,  and  some  of  tho  animals  grew  into 
monkeys,  and  finally  the  monkeys  into  men.  Tho  fire  mist 
they  stoutly  affirm  to  liave  existed  from  eternity.  They 
do  not  allege  that  they  remember  that  (and  yet  as  they 
thems(dves  are,  as  they  say,  compoHe<l  body  and  soul  of  this 
eternal  fire  mist,  they  ought  to  remember),  but  only  that  there 
are  certain  comets  which  occasionally  come  within  fifty  or 
sixty  millions  of  miles  of  this  earth,  which  they  suppose 
may  be  conjpost^d  of  the  fire  mist  whieli  they  mpium:  this 
world  is  made  of.  A  solid  basis,  truly,  on  which  to  build 
a  world  t  A  cloud  in  the  sky,  fifty  million  of  miles  away, 
may  possibly  be  fire  mist,  may  possibly  cool  down  and  eou- 


16  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

dense  into  a  solid  globe  ;  therefore,  this  fire  mist  is  eternal, 
and   had   no  need  of  a  Creator ;  and   our  world,   and  all 
other  worlds,  may  possibly  have    been  like   it;  therefore, 
they  also  were  never  created  by  Almighty  God.     Such  is 
the  atheist's  ground  of  faith.     The  thinnest  vapor  or  the 
merest  supposition  will  suffice  to  risk  his  eternal  salvation 
upon  ;  provided  only  it  contradicts  the  Bible  and  gets  rid 
of  God.     We  can  not  avoid  asking  with  as  much  gravity 
as   we    can  command,  Where  did  the   mist   come    from  ? 
Did  the  mist  make  itself?     Where  did  the  fire  come  from? 
Did  it  kindle  of  its  own  accord  ?     Who  put  the  fire  and 
mist  together  ?     Was  it  red  hot  enough  from  all  eternity 
to  melt  granite  ?     Then  why  is  it  any  cooler  now  ?     How 
could  an  eternal  red  heat  cool  down  ?     If  it  existed  as  a 
red  hot  fire  mist  from   eternity,  until   our  atheist  began 
to  observe  it  beginning  to  cool,  why  should  it  ever  begin 
to  cool  at  all,  and  why  begin  to  cool  just  then?  Fill  it  as 
full  of  electricity,  magnetism  and  odyle  as  you  please  ;  do 
these  aff"ord  any  reason  for  its  very  extraordinary  conduct? 
The  utmost   they  do  is   to  show  you  how  such  a  change 
took  place,   but  they  neither   tell  you   where  the  original 
matter  came  from^  nor  why  its  form  was  changed.     Change 
is  an  efiect,  and  every  effect  requires  a  cause.    There  could 
be  no  cause  outside  of  the  fire  mist;  for  they  say  there  was 
nothing  else  in  the  universe.     Then  the  cause  must  be  in 
the  mist  itself     Had  it  a  mind,  and  a  will,  and  a  percep- 
tion of  propriety?     Did   the   mist  become  sensible  of  the 
lightness  of  its  behavior,  and  the  fire  resolve  to  cool  off  a 
little,  and  both  consult  together  on  the  propriety  of  drop- 
ping their  erratic  blazing  through  infinite  space,  and  re- 
solve to  settle  down  into  orderly,  well-behaved  suns  and 
planets?     In  the  division  of  the  property,  what  became  of 
the  mind?     Did  it  go  to  the  sun,  or  to  the  moon,  or  to  the 
pole  star,  or  to  this  earth?     Or,  was  it  clipped  up  into  lit- 
tle pieces  and  divided  among  the  stars  in   proportion  to 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  17 

their  respective  magnitudes;  so  that  the  sun  may  have,  say 
the  hundredth  part  of  an  idea,  aind  the  moon  a  faint  per- 
ception of  it?  Did  the  fire  mist's  mind  die  under  this  cruel 
clipping  and  dissecting  process;  or  is  it  of  the  nature  of  a 
polypus,  each  piece  alive  and  growing  up  to  perfection  in 
its  own  way?  Has  each  of  the  planets  and  fixed  stars  a 
great  "soul  of  the  world"  as  well  as  this  earth,  and  are 
they  looking  down  intelligently  and  compassionately  on  this 
little  globe  of  ours?  Had  we  not  better  build  altars  to  all 
the  host  of  heaven  and  return  to  the  religion  of  our  acorn- 
fed  ancestors,  who  burned  their  children  alive,  in  honor  of 
the  sun,  on  Sun-days? 

An  aqueous  solution  of  this  difficulty  of  getting  rid  of 
Almighty  God,  is  frequently  proposed.  It  is  knowfi  that 
certain  chemical  solutions,  when  mixed  together,  deposit  a 
sediment,  or  precipitate,  as  chemists  call  it.  And  it  is  sup- 
posed that  the  universe  was  all  once  in  a  state  of  solution, 
in  primeval  oceans,  and  that  the  mingling  of  the  waters  of 
these  oceans  caused  them  to  deposit  the  various  salts  and 
earths  which  form  the  worlds  in  the  form  of  mud,  which 
afterward  hardened  into  rock,  or  vegetated  into  trees  and 
men.  Thus,  it  is  clearly  demonstrated  that  there  is  no  need 
for  the  Creator  if — if — if — we  only  had  somebody  to  make 
these  primeval  oceans — and  somebody  to  mix  them  to- 
gether !  * 

The  development  theory  of  the  production  of  the  human 
race  from  the  mud,  through  the  mushroom,  the  snail,  the 
tortoise,  the  greyhound,  the  monkey  and  the  man,  which 

*  It  might  be  supposed  that  such  a  theory  is  too  palpably  absurd 
to  be  believed  by  any  save  the  inmates  of  a  lunatic  asylum,  had  not 
the  writer,  and  hundreds  of  the  citizens  of  Cincinnati,  seen  a  lec- 
turer perform  the  ordinary  experiment  of  producing  colored  precip- 
itates by  mixing  colorless  solutions,  as  a  demonstration  of  the  self 
acting  powers  of  matter.  Common  sense,  being  a  gift  of  God,  ia 
righteously  withdrawn  from  those  who  deny  him. 
2 


IB  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

is  now  such  a  favorite  with  atheists,  if  it  were  fully  proved 
to  be  a  fact,  would  only  increase  the  difficulty  of  getting 
rid  of  God.  For  either  the  primeval  mud  had  all  the 
germs  of  the  future  plants  and  monkeys,  and  men's  bodies 
and  souls,  in  itself  originally,  or  it  had  not.  If  it  had  not, 
where  did  it  get  them?  If  it  had  all  the  life  and  intelli- 
gence in  the  universe  in  itself,  it  was  a  very  extraordinary 
kind  of  God.  We  shall  call  it  the  mud-god.  Our  atheists 
then  believe  in  a  god  of  muddy  body  and  intelligent  mind. 
But  if  they  deny  intelligence  to  the  mud,  then  we  are 
back  to  our  original  difficulty,  with  a  large  appendix,  viz : 
The  paving  stones  made  themselves  first  and  all  atheists 
afterward. 

The*whole  theory  of  development  is  utterly  false  in  its 
first  principles.  From  the  beginning  of  the  world  to  the 
present  day,  no  man  has  ever  observed  an  instance  of  the 
spontaneous  generation  of  life.  There  is  no  law  of  nature, 
whether  electric,  magnetic,  odylic,  or  any  other,  which  can 
produce  a  living  plant  or  animal,  save  from  the  germ  or  seed 
of  some  previous  plant  or  animal  of  the  same  species.  Nor 
has  a  single  instance  of  the  transmutation  of  species  ever 
been  proved.  Every  beast,  bird,  fish,  insect  and  plant 
brings  forth  after  its  kind,  and  has  done  so  since  its  crea- 
tion. No  law  of  Natural  Philosophy  is  more  firmly  estab- 
lished than  this,  TTiat  there  is  no  spontaneous  generation,  nor 
transmutation  of  ap'icies.  It  is  true  there  is  a  regular  gra- 
dation of  the  various  orders  of  animal  and  vegetable  life, 
rising  like  the  steps  of  a  staircase,  one  above  the  other ; 
but  gradation  is  no  more  caused  by  transmutation  than  a 
staircase  is  made  by  an  ambitious  lower  step  changing  itself 
into  all  the  upper  ones. 

To  refer  the  origin  of  the  world  to  the  laws  of  nature 
is  absurd.  Law,  as  Johnson  defines  it,  is  a  rule  of  action. 
It  necessarily  requires  an  acting  agent,  an  object  designed  in 
the  action,  means  to  attain  it,  and  authoritative  enforcement 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF  ?  19 

of  the  use  of  those  means  by  a  lawgiver.  Are  the  laws  of 
nature  laws  given  by  some  supposed  intelligent  being,  wor- 
shiped by  the  heathen  of  old,  and  by  the  atheists  of  mod- 
ern times,  under  that  name?  Or  do  they  signify  the  orderly 
and  regular  sequence  of  cause  and  effect,  which  is  so  manifest 
in  the  course  of  all  events  ?  If,  as  atheists  say,  the  latter, 
this  is  the  very  thing  we  want  them  to  account  for.  How 
came  the  world  to  be  under  law  without  a  lawgiver?  Where 
there  is  law,  there  must  be  design.  Chance  is  utterly  in- 
consistent with  the  idea  of  law.  Where  there  is  design 
there  must,  of  necessity,  be  a  designer.  Matter  in  any 
shape,  stones  or  lightnings,  mud  or  magnets,  can  not 
think,  contrive,  design,  give  law  to  itself,  or  to  any  thing 
else,  much  less  bring  itself  into  existence.  There  is  no 
conceivable  way  of  accounting  for  this  orderly  world  we 
live  in  but  one  or  other  of  these  two:  Either  an  intelligent 
being  created  the  world,  or — the  paving  stones  made  them- 
selves. 

"  Here  are  two  hypotheses,  of  which  the  oldest  is  admit- 
ted to  offer  a  full  and  consistent  explanation  of  all  the  facts 
of  science.  There  can  be  no  better  cause  for  any  given 
formation  than  that  Grod  created  it  so.  Men  of  science, 
however,  allege  that  creation  (out  of  nothing)  is  'scientif- 
ically inconceivable ;'  but  this  is  only  throwing  dust  in 
our  eyes ;  of  course,  science  can  not  verify  it,  neither  can 
it  verify  any  other  theory  of  causation.  The  question  is 
whether  reason  can  accept  the  fact,  though  science  can  not 
even  imagine  the  process  ?  If  not,  there  is  nothing  for  us 
but  the  eternity  of  matter^  for  evolution  itself  has  to  face 
the  very  same  difl&culty  when  asked  to  account  for  its  pri- 
mal germ.  It  is  surely  more  conceivable  that  God  created 
the  first  matter  out  of  nothing,  than  that  nothing  evolved 
something  out  of  itself,  by  an  imminent  law  of  its  nature. 
This  point,  however,  our  scientific  men  are  sadly  given  to 
shirking.     They  profess  in  general  not  to  hold  the  eter- 


20  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

nity  of  matter,  but  they  have  nothing  to  suggest  for  its 
origin.  They  accept  it  as  the  starting  point  of  evolution, 
and  decline  to  speculate  on  its  cause.  This,  as  Dr.  Christ- 
lieb  observes  of  Bauer's  kindred  system  of  criticism,  is 
*  beginning  without  a  beginning — everything  is  already 
extant '  We  may  as  well  start  with  species,  as  with  pro- 
toplasm, if  the  inquiry  is  not  to  be  pushed  beyond  the 
fact.  The  evolutionist  is  bound  to  answer  whether  the 
process  is  eternal,  or  how  it  began  to  be.  Either  it  had  a 
beginning  or  it  had  not ;  if  it  had,  creation  out  of  nothing 
is  conceded,  and  there  is  nothing  left  to  dispute.  It  is 
puerile  to  except  to  the  frequency  of  creative  acts  on  the 
ordinary  hypothesis  of  specific  origin,  because  it  is  freely 
open  to  science  to  reduce  the  several  '  kinds  *  to  the  lowest 
minimum  it  can  experimentally  establish.  Moreover — be- 
sides the  utter  inconsequence  of  such  purely  relative  ideas 
as  often  and  rare — it  is  far  more  reasonable  that  an  eternal, 
personal  author  of  creation  should  watch  over  his  work  to 
shape  and  diversify  it  at  his  pleasure,  than  that,  after  a 
single  act,  he  should  relapse  into  inertia  like  the  Hindu 
Brahmin.  To  concentrate  the  whole  evidence  of  design  in 
one  original  act,  ages  upon  ages  ago,  with  no  opening  for 
after  interference,  undermines  belief  in  a  personal  designer, 
simply  because  it  leaves  him  nothing  to  do."* 

Leaving  these  brutish  among  the  people  who  assert  the 
latter,  to  the  enjoyment  of  their  folly,  let  us  ascertain 
what  we  can  know  of  the  great  Creator  of  the  heavens  and 
the  earth.  God  refers  the  atheists  of  the  Psalmist's  days 
to  their  own  bodies  for  proofs  of  his  intelligence,  to  their 
own  minds  for  proofs  of  his  personality,  and  to  their  own 
observation  of  the  judgments  of  his  providence  against 
evil-doers  for  proofs  of  his  moral  government.  Our  text 
ascribes   for   him    perception   and    intelligence :     He   that 


*John  Bull. 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  21 

'planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not  hear  ?  He  that  formed  the  eye, 
shall  he  not  see?  It  does  not  say,  he  has  an  eye  or  an  ear, 
but  that  he  has  the  knowledge  we  acquire  by  those  organs. 
And  the  argument  is  from  the  designed  organ  to  the  de- 
signing maker  of  it,  and  is  perfectly  irresistible.  A  blind 
god  could  not  make  a  seeing  man.  Let  us  look  for  a  little 
at  a  few  of  the  many  marks  of  design  in  this  organ  to 
which  God  thus  refers  us. 

We  shall  first  observe  the  mechanical  skill  displayed  in 
the  formation  of  the  eye,  and  then  the  optical  arrangements, 
or  rather  a  few  of  them,  for  there  are  more  than  eight 
hundred  distinct  contrivances  already  observed  by  anato- 
mists in  the  dead  eye,  while  the  great  contrivance  of  all, 
the  power  of  seeing,  is  utterly  beyond  their  ken.  I  hold 
in  my  hand  a  box  made  of  several  pieces  of  wood  glued 
together,  and  covered  on  the  outside  with  leather.  Inside 
it  is  lined  with  cotton,  and  the  cotton  has  a  lining  of  fine 
white  silk.  You  at  once  observe  that  it  is  intended  to 
protect  some  delicate  and  precious  article  of  jewelry,  and 
that  the  maker  of  this  box  must  have  been  acquainted 
with  the  strength  of  wood,  the  toughness  of  leather, 
the  adhesiveness  of  glue,  the  softness  and  elasticity  of 
cotton,  the  tenacity  of  silk,  and  the  mode  of  spinning  and 
weaving  it,  the  form  of  the  jewel  to  be  placed  in  it,  and 
the  danger  against  which  this  box  would  protect  it — ten 
entirely  distinct  branches  of  knowledge,  which  every  child 
who  should  pick  up  such  a  box  in  the  street  would  unhesi- 
tatingly ascribe  to  its  maker.  Now,  the  box  in  which  the 
eye  is  placed  is  composed  of  seven  bones  glued  together 
internally,  and  covered  with  skin  on  the  outside,  lined 
with  the  softest  fat,  enveloped  in  a  tissue  compared  with 
which  the  finest  silk  is  only  canvas,  and  the  cavity  is 
shaped  so  as  exactly  to  fit  the  eye,  while  the  brow  projects 
over  like  a  roof  of  a  veranda,  to  keep  off  falling  dust  and 
rain  from  injuring  it  while  the  lid  is  open;  and  the  eye- 


22  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

brows,  like  a  thatcli  sloping  outward,  conduct  the  sweat  of 
the  brow,  by  which  a  man  earns  his  bread,  away  around 
the  outer  cover,  that  it  may  not  enter  the  eye  and  destroy 
the  sight.  If  it  were  preposterous  nonsense  to  say  that 
electricity,  or  magnetism,  or  odyle,  contrived  and  made  a 
little  bracelet  box,  how  much  more  absurd  to  ascribe  the 
making  of  the  cavity  of  the  eye  to  any  such  cause. 

Let  us  next  look  at  the  shape  of  the  eye.     You  observe 
it  is  nearly  round  in  its  section   across,  and  rather  oval  in 
its  other  direction,  and  the  cavity  it  lies  in  is  shaped  ex- 
actly to  fit  it.     Now  there   are  eyes   in   the  world   angular 
and  triangular,  and  even  square ;  and  as  you   may  readily 
suppose,  the  creatures  which  have  them  can  not  move  them; 
to  compensate  for  such  inconvenience,  some  of  them,  as  the 
common  fly,  have  several  hundred.     But,  unless  our  heads 
were  as  large  as  sugar  hogsheads,  we  could  not  be  so  fur- 
nished, and  we  must  either  have  movable  eyes  or  see  only 
in  one  direction.     Accordingly,  the  Contriver  of  the  eye 
has  hung  it  with  a  hinge.     Now  there  are  various  kinds  of 
hinges,  moving  in  one  direction,  and  the  Maker  of  the  eye 
might  have  made  a  hinge  on  which  the  eye  would  move  up 
and  down,  or  he  might  have  given  us  a  hinge  that  would 
bend  right  and  left,  in  which  case  we  should  have  been  able 
merely  to  squint  a  little  in  two  directions.     But  to  enable 
one  to  see   in  every  direction,   there  is   only  one  kind  of 
hinge  that  would  answer  the  purpose — the  ball  and  socket 
joint — and  the  Former  of  the  eye  has  hung  it  with  such  a 
hinge,  retaining  it  in  its  place  partly  by  the  projection  of 
the  bones  of  the  face,  and   partly  by  the  muscles  and  the 
optic  nerve,  which  is  about  as   thick   as   a  candlewick,  and 
as  tough  as  leather.     Most  of  you  have  seen  a  ship,  and 
know  the  way  the  yards  are  moved,  and  turned,  and  squared 
by  ropes  and  pulleys      The    rigging  of  the  eye,  though 
not  so  large,  is  fully  as  curious.     There  is  a  tackle,  called 
a  muscle,  to  pull  it  down  when  you  want  to   look   down ; 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  23 

another  tackle  to  pull  it  up  when  you  have  done ;  one  to 
pull  it  to  the  right,  and  another  to  the  left ;  there  is  one 
fastened  to  the  eyeball  in  two  places,  and  geared  through 
a  pulley  which  will  make  it  move  in  any  direction,  as  when 
we  roll  our  eyes;  and  the  sixth,  fastened  to  the  under 
side  of  the  eye,  keeps  it  steady  when  we  do  not  need  to 
move  it.  Then  the  eyelids  are  each  provided  with  appro- 
priate gearing,  and  need  to  have  it  durable  too,  for  it  is 
used  thirty  thousand  times  a  day;  in  fact  every  time  we 
wink.  If  God  had  neglected  to  place  these  little  cords  to 
pull  up  the  eyelash,  we  should  all  have  been  in  the  condi- 
tion of  the  unfortunate  gentleman  described  by  Dr.  Nieu- 
wentyt,  who  was  obliged  to  pull  up  his  eyelashes  with 
his  fingers  whenever  he  wanted  to  see.  There  is,  too^ 
another  admirable  piece  of  forethought  and  skill  displayed 
by  the  Former  of  the  eye,  in  providing  a  liquid  to  wash  it, 
and  a  sponge  to  wipe  it  with,  and  a  waste  pipe,  through  the 
bone  of  the  nose,  to  carry  off  the  tears  which  have  been 
used  in  washing  and  moistening  the  eye.  Now  what  ab- 
surdity to  say  that  a  law  of  nature,  say  gravity,  or  electricity, 
or  magnetism  has  such  knowledge  of  the  principles  of  me- 
chanics as  the  eye  proclaims  its  Former  to  have — that  it 
could  make  a  choice  among  multitudes  of  shapes  of  eyes 
and  kinds  of  joints,  and  this  choice  the  very  best  for  our 
convenience  ;  and  that  having  known  and  chosen,  it  could 
have  manufactured  the  various  parts  of  this  complicated 
machine.  Such  a  machine  requires  an  intelligent  manufac- 
turer; and  yet  we  have  only  as  yet  been  looking  at  the 
dead  eye,  paying  no  regard  to  sight  at  all.  Even  a  blind 
man's  eye  prove  an  intelligent  Creator. 

Let  us  now  turn  our  thoughts  to  the  instrument  of  sight. 
The  optic  nerve  is  the  part  of  the  eye  which  conveys  visions 
to  the  mind.  Suppose,  instead  of  being  where  you  observe 
it,  at  the  back  part  of  the  eye,  it  had  been  brought  out  to 
the  front,  and  that  reflections  from  objects  had  fallen  di- 


24 


DIB  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 


reetly  upon  it.  It  is 
obvious  that  it  would 
have  been  exposed  to 
inj ury  from  every  float  • 
ingparticleofdust,  and 
you  would  always  have 
felt  such  a  sensation  as 
is  caused  by  a  burn  or 
"ecald  when  the  skin 
peels  oft',  and  leaves 
the  ends  of  the  nerves 
exposed  to  the  air.  The 
tender  points  of  the  fibers  of  the  optic  nerve,  too,  would 
soon  become  blunted  and  broken,  and  the  eye,  of  course,  use- 
less. How,  then,  is  the  nerve  to  be  protected,  and  yet  the 
sight  not  obstructed?  If  it  were  covered  with  skin,  as  the 
other  nerves  are,  you  could  not  see  through  it.  For 
thousands  of  years  after  men  had  eyes  and  used  them,  they 
knew  no  substance,  at  once  hard  and  transparent,  which 
could  answer  the  double  purpose  of  protection  and  vision. 
And  to  this  day  they  know  none  hard  enough  for  protec- 
tion, clear  enough  for  vision,  and  elastic  enough  to  resume 
its  form  after  a  blow.  But  men  did  the  best  they  could, 
and  put  a  round  piece  of  brittle  but  transparent  glass  in  a 
ring  of  tougher  metal  for  the  protection  of  the  hands  of  a 
watch ;  and  he  who  first  invented  the  watch  crystal  thought 
he  had  made  a  discovery.  Now,  observe  in  the  eye,  that 
forward  part  is  the  watch  glass;  the  cornea,  made  of  a  sub- 
stance at  once  hard,  transparent  and  elastic — which  man 
has  never  been  able  to  imitate — set  into  the  sclerotica, 
that  white,  muscular  coat  which  constitutes  the  white  of 
your  eye,  acts  as  a  frame  for  the  cornea,  and  answers  an- 
other important  purpose,  as  we  shall  presently  see. 

But,  supposing  the  end  of  the  nerve  protected  by  the 
glass,  we  might  have  had  it  brought  up  to  the  glass  without 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  25 

any  interposing  lenses  or  humors,  as,  in  fact,  is  nearly  the 
case  with  some  Crustacea.  We  can  not  well  imagine  all  the 
inconveniences  of  such  an  eye  to  us.  If  we  could  see  dis- 
tinctly at  all,  we  could  not  j-ee  much  farther  or  wider  than 
the  breadth  of  the  end  of  the  nerve  at  once.  Our  sight 
would  then  be  very  like  that  faculty  of  perceiving  colors 
by  the  points  of  the  fingers,  which  some  persons  are  said 
to  possess.  In  that  case,  seeing  would  only  be  a  nicer  kind 
of  groping,  and  our  eyes  would  be  more  conveniently  fixed 
on  the  points  of  our  fingers;  or,  as  with  many  insects,  on 
the  ends  of  long  antennae.  Such  a  form  of  eye  is  precisely 
suited  to  the  wants  of  an  animal  which  has  not  an  idea 
beyond  its  food,  which  has  no  business  with  any  object  too 
large  for  its  mouth,  and  whose  great  concern  is  to  stick  to 
a  rock  and  catch  whatever  animalculae  the  water  floats 
within  the  grasp  of  its  feelers.  But  for  a  being  whose 
intercourse  should  be  with  all  the  works  of  God,  and  who?e 
chief  end  in  such  intercourse  should  be  to  behold  the 
Creator  reflected  in  his  works,  it  was  manifestly  necessary 
to  have  a  wider  and  larger  range  of  vision  ;  and,  therefore, 
a  difi"erent  form  of  eye  Both  these  objects,  breadth  of 
field  combined  with  length  of  range,  arc  obtained  by  plac- 
ing the  optic  nerve  at  the  back  of  the  eye,  and  interposing 
several  lenses,  through  which  objects  are  observed.  By 
this  arrangement  a  visual  angle  is  secured,  and  all  objects 
lying  within  it  are  distinctly  visible  at  the  same  time. 
This  faculty  of  perceiving  several  objects  at  the  same  time 
is  a  special  property  of  sight  which  tends  greatly  to  en- 
large our  conceptions  of  the  knowledge  of  Him  who  gave 
it.  A  man  who  never  saw  can  have  no  idea  of  it.  He  can 
not  taste  two  separate  tastes  at  once,  nor  smell  two  distinct 
smells  at  once  ;  nor  feel  more  than  one  object  with  each 
hand  at  once;  and  if  he  hears  several  sounds  at  the  same 
time,  they  either  flow  into  each  other,  making  a  harmony, 
or  confuse  him  with  their  discord.     Yet  we  are  all  con- 


26  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

sci'us  ttat  we  see  a  vast  variety  of  distinct  and  separate 
objects  at  one  glaoce  of  our  eyes.  I  think  it  is  manifest 
that  the  Former  of  such  an  eye  not  only  intended  its 
owner  to  observe  such  a  vast  variety  of  objects,  but  from 
the  capacity  of  his  own  sight  to  infer  the  vastly  wider  range 
of  vision  of  Him  who  gave  it. 

Besides  the  breadth  of  the  field  of  vision,  we  also  require 
length  of  range  for  the  purpose  of  life.  The  thousand 
inconveniences  which  the  short-sighted  man  so  painfully 
feels  are  obvious  to  all.  Yet  it  may  tend  to  reconcile  such 
to  their  lot  to  know  that  thousands  of  the  liveliest  and 
merriest  of  God's  creatures  can  not  see  an  inch  before  them. 
Small  birds  and  insects,  which  feed  on  very  minute  insects, 
need  eyes  like  microscopes  to  find  them  ;  while  the  eagle 
and  the  fish  hawk,  which  soar  up  till  they  are  almost  out 
of  sight,  can  distinctly  see  the  hare  or  the  herring  a  mile 
below  them,  and  so  must  have  eyes  like  telescopes.  We, 
too,  need  to  observe  minute  objects  very  closely,  as  when 
we  read  fine  print,  or  when  a  lady  threads  a  fine  needle  at 
microscope  range ;  but,  if  confined  to  that  range,  we  could 
not  see  our  fr'iends  across  the  room,  or  find  our  way  to  the 
next  street.  Again,  in  traveling  we  need  to  see  objects 
miles  away,  and  at  night  we  see  the  stars  millions  of  miles 
away  ;  but  then,  if  confined  to  the  long  range,  we  should  be 
strangers  at  home,  and  never  get  within  a  mile  of  any  ac- 
quaintance. Now,  how  by  combine  these  two  powers,  of 
seeing  near  objects  and  distant  ones  with  the  same  eye,  is 
the  pr  )blem  which  the  Maker  of  the  eye  had  to  solve. 
Let  us  look  how  man  tried  to  solve  it.  A  magnifying  lens 
will  collect  the  rays  from  any  distant  object,  and  convey 
Ihem  to  a  point  called  the  focus.  Then  suppose  we  put 
(his  glass  in  the  tube  of  an  opera-glass,  or  pocket  spy -glass, 
and  1  >ok  through  the  eye-hole  and  the  concave  lens, 
properly  adjusted,  in  front  of  it,  wc  shall  see  the  image  of 
the  object  considerably  magnified.     But  f^uppose  (ho  object 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  27 

draws  rcrj  near,  we  see  nothing  distinctly  ;  for  the  rays  re- 
flected from  it,  which  were  nearly  parallel  while  it  was  at 
a  distance,  are  no  longer  so  when  it  comes  near,  but  scatter 
in  all  directions,  and  those  which  fall  on  the  lens  are 
collected  at  a  point  much  nearer  to  the  lens  than  before, 
and  the  eye-glass  must  be  pushed  forward  to  that  focus. 
Accordingly,  you  know  that  the  spy -glass  is  made  to  slide 
back  and  forward,  and  the  telescope  has  a  screw  to 
lengthen  or  shorten  the  tube  according  to  the  distance  of 
the  objects  observed.  Another  way  of  meeting  the  case 
would  be  by  taking  out  the  lens,  and  putting  in  one  of 
less  magnifying  power,  a  flatter  lens,  for  the  nearer  object. 
Now,  at  first  sight,  it  would  seem  a  very  inconvenient 
thing  to  have  eyes  drawing  out  and  in  several  inches  like 
spy-glasses,  and  still  more  inconvenient  to  have  twenty  or 
thirty  pairs  of  eyes,  and  to  need  to  take  out  our  eyes, 
and  put  in  a  new  set  twenty  times  a  day.  The  ingenuity 
of  man  has  been  at  work  hundreds  of  years  to  discover 
some  other  method  of  adapting  an  optical  instrument  to 
long  and  short  range,  but  without  success  Now,  the 
Former  of  the  eye  knew  the  properties  of  light  and  the 
properties  of  lenses  before  the  first  eye  was  made  ;  he  knew 
the  mode  of  adjusting  them  for  any  distance,  from  the 
thousands  of  millions  of  miles  between  the  eye  and  the  star, 
to  the  half-inch  distance  of  the  mote  in  the  sunbeam;  and 
he  had  not  only  availed  himself  of  both  the  principles 
which  opticians  discovered,  but  has  executed  his  work 
with  an  infinite  perfection  which  bungling  men  may 
admire,  but  can  never  imitate.  The  sclerotic  coat  of  the 
eye,  and  the  choroid  which  lies  next  it  are  full  of  muscles 
which,  by  their  contraction,  both  press  back  the  crystalline 
lens  nearer  the  retina,  and  also  flatten  it;  the  vitreous 
humor,  in  which  the  crystalline  lens  lies,  a  fine,  trans- 
parent humor,  about  as  thick  as  the  white  of  an  egg,  giving 
way  behind    it,   and    also   slightly    altering  its  form   and 


28  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

power  of  refraction  to  suit  the  case.  Thus,  that  which  the 
astronomer,  or  the  microscopist,  performs  by  a  tedious  pro- 
cess, and  then  very  imperfectly,  we  perform  perfectly, 
easily,  instantly,  and  almost  involuntarily,  with  that  perfect 
compound  microscope  and  telescope  invented  by  the 
Former  of  the  human  eye.  Surely,  in  giving  us  an  instru- 
ment so  admirably  fitted  for  observing  the  lofty  grandeur 
of  the  heavens  and  the  lowlier  beauties  of  the  earth,  he 
meant  to  allure  us  to  the  discovery  of  the  perfections  of 
the  great  Designer  and  Former  of  all  these  wondrous  works. 
But  there  is  another  contrivance  in  the  eye,  adapted  to 
lead  us  further  to  the  consideration  of  the  extent  of  the 
knowledge  of  its  power.  We  are  placed  in  a  world  of 
variable  lights,  of  day  and  night,  and  of  all  the  variations 
between  light  and  darkness.  We  can  not  see  in  the  full 
blaze  of  light,  nor  yet  in  utter  darkness.  Had  the  eye 
been  formed  to  bear  only  the  noonday  glare,  we  had  been 
half  blind  in  the  afternoon,  and  wholly  so  in  the  evening. 
If  the  eye  were  formed  so  as  to  see  at  night,  we  had  been 
helpless  as  owls  in  the  day.  But  the  variations  of  light 
in  the  atmosphere  may  be  in  some  measure  compensated) 
as  we  know,  by  regulating  the  quantity  admitted  to  our 
houses — shutting  up  the  windows  When  we  wish  to  reg- 
ulate the  admission  of  light  to  our  rooms,  we  have  recourse 
to  various  clumsy  contrivances  ;  paper  blinds,  perpetually 
tearing,  sunblind  rollers  that  will  not  roll,  Venetian  blinds 
continually  in  need  of  mending,  awnings  blowing  away  with 
every  storm,  or  shutters,  which  shut  up  and  leave  us  in  en- 
tire darkness.  A  self-acting  window,  which  shall  expand 
with  the  opening  of  light  in  the  mornings  and  evenings, 
and  close  up  of  its  own  accord  as  the  light  increases  toward 
noon,  has  never  been  manufactured  by  mm.  But  the 
Former  of  the  eye  took  note  of  the  necessities  and  con- 
veniences of  the  case,  and  besides  giving  a  pair  of  shutters 
to  close  up  when  we  go  to  sleep,  he  has  given  the  most 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  29 

admirable  sunblinds  ever  invented.  The  nerve  of  the  eye 
at  the  back  of  its  chamber  can  riot  see  without  light,  and 
its  light  comes  through  the  little  round  window  called  the 
pupil,  or  black  of  the  eye — which  is  simply  a  hole  in  the 
iris,  or  colored  part.  Now  this  iris  is  formed  of  two  sets 
of  muscles:  one  set  of  elastic  rings,  which,  when  left  to 
themselves,  contract  the  opening;  and  another  set  at  right 
angles  to  them,  like  the  spokes  of  a  wheel,  pulling  the 
inner  edge  of  the  iris  in  all  directions  to  the  outside.  In 
fact  it  is  not  so  much  a  sunblind,  as  a  self-acting  window, 
opening  and  closing  the  aperture  according  to  our  need  of 
light,  and  doing  this  so  instantaneously  that  we  are  not 
sensible  of  the  process. 

It  is  self-evident  that  the  Maker  of  such  an  eye  was  ac- 
quainted with  the  properties  of  light,  and  the  alternations 
of  night  and  day,  as  well  as  with  the  mechanical  contriv- 
ances for  adjusting  the  eye  to  these  variable  circumistances. 
He  has  given  us  an  eye  capable  of  seeking  knowledge 
among  partial  darkness,  and  of  availing  itself  for  this 
purpose  of  imperfect  light;  an  apt  symbol  of  our  mental 
constitution  and  moral  situation  in  a  world  where  good 
and  evil,  light  and  darkness,  mix  and  alternate. 

Perhaps  some  one  is  ready  to  ask,  What  is  the  use  of 
so  many  lenses  in  the  eye  ?  It  seems  as  if  the  crystalline 
lens  and  the  optic  nerve  were  sufficient  for  the  purpose  of 
sight,  with  the  cornea  simply  to  protect  them.  What  is 
the  use  of  the  aqueous  humor  and  the  vitreous  humor? 

Light,  when  refracted  through  the  lens,  becomes  sepa- 
rated into  its  component  colors — red,  yellow,  green,  blue, 
and  violet;  and  the  greater  the  magnifying  power  of  the 
lens,  and  the  brighter  the  object  viewed,  the  greater  the 
dispersion  of  the  rays.  So  that  if  the  crystalline  lens  of 
the  eye  alone  were  used,  we  should  see  every  white  object 
bluish  in  the  middle,  and  yellowish  and  reddish  at  the 
edges;  or,  in  vulgar  language,  we  should  see  starlight. 


30  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

This  difficulty  perplexed  Sir  Isaac  Newton  all  his  life, 
and  he  never  discovered  the  mode  of  making  a  refracting 
telescope  which  would  obviate  it.  But  M  DoUand,  an  op- 
tician, reflecting  that  the  very  same  difficulty  must  have 
presented  itself  to  the  Maker  of  the  eye,  determined  to 
ascertain  how  he  had  obviated  it.  He  found  that  the  Maker 
of  the  eye  had  a  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  diiferent  sub- 
stances have  different  powers  of  refracting  or  bending  the 
rays  of  light  which  pass  through  them,  and  that  liquids 
have  generally  a  different  power  of  refraction  from  solids. 
For  instance,  if  you  put  a  straight  stick  in  water,  the  part 
under  water  will  seem  bent  at  a  considerable  angle,  while 
if  you  put  the  stick  through  a  little  hole  in  a  pane 
of  glass  it  will  not  seem  so  much  bent.  He  further  dis- 
covered that  oil  of  cassia  had  a  diJQferent  power  of  refrac- 
tion from  water,  and  the  white  of  an  egg  still  a  difi'erent 
power.  He  discovered  also  that  the  first  lens  of  the  eye, 
the  aqueous  humor,  is  very  like  water;  that  the  crystalline 
lense  is  a  firm  jelly,  and  that  the  vitreous  humor  is  about 
ihe  consistency  of  the  white  of  an  egg.  The  combination 
of  these  three  lenses,  of  difi'erent  powers  of  refraction, 
secures  the  correction  of  their  separate  errors.  He  could 
not  make  telescope  lenses  of  jelly,  nor  water;  therefore, 
he  could  not  make  a  perfect  achromatic  telescope,  but  he 
learned  the  lesson  of  mutual  compensations  of  difficulties 
which  the  Maker  of  the  eye  teaches  the  reflecting  anato- 
mist, and  procuring  flint  and  crown  glass  of  different  de- 
grees of  refraction,  he  arranged  them  in  the  achromatic 
lens  so  as  nearly  to  remedy  the  defect. 

I  think  that  you  will  at  once  admit  that  Dolland's  at- 
tempt to  remedy  the  evils  of  confused  sight  in  the  telescope 
indicated  a  desire  to  obtain  a  precise  and  correct  view  of 
the  objects ;  and  that  his  success  in  constructing  an  instru- 
ment, nearly  perfect,  for  the  use  of  astronomers,  gave  evi- 
dence that  he  himself  had  a  clear  idea  of  that  perfect  and 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF?  31 

ac3ur.ite  vision  which  h.2  thus  attempted  to  bestow  on 
thorn.  Shall  we  then  imagine  any  inaccuracy  in  the  sight 
of  Him,  who  not  only  desired,  but  executed  and  bestowed 
on  us,  an  instrument  so  perfectly  adapted  to  the  imperfec- 
tions of  this  lower  world,  and  whose  very  imperfections 
are  the  materials  from  which  he  produces  clear  and  perfect 
vision?  No!  in  God's  eye  there  are  no  chromatic  refrac- 
tions of  passions,  or  prejudice,  or  party  feeling,  or  self- 
love.  He  sees  no  reflected  or  refracted  light.  0  Father 
of  Light!  with  whom  is  no  variableness,  or  shadow  of 
turning,  open  our  eyes  to  behold  Thee  clearly ! 

Our  text  thus  leads  us  to  a  knowledge  of  God's  charac- 
ter, from  the  structure  of  the  bodies  he  has  given  us.  He 
that  formed  my  eye  sees.  Though  my  feeble  vision  is  by 
no  means  a  standard  or  limit  for  his  Omniscience,  yet  I 
may  conclude  that  every  perfection  of  the  power  of  sight 
he  has  given  me  existed  previously  in  him.  Has  he  en- 
dowed me,  a  poor  puny  mortal,  the  permanent  tenant  of 
only  two  yards  of  earth,  with  an  eye  capable  of  ranging  over 
earth's  broad  plains  and  lofty  mountains,  of  traversing  her 
beauteous  lakes  and  lovely  rivers,  of  scanning  her  crowded 
cities,  and  inspecting  all  their  curious  productions,  and 
specially  delighting  to  investigate  the  bodily  forms  of  men, 
and  their  mental  characters  displayed  on  the  printed  page  ? 
Has  he  given  me  the  principle  of  curiosity,  without  which 
such  an  endowment  were  useless?  Then  most  undoubted- 
ly he  has  Himself  both  the  desire  to  observe  all  the  works 
of  his  hands,  and  the  power  to  gratify  that  desire.  The 
Former  of  the  eye  must  of  necessity  be  the  great  Observer. 

Wheresoever  an  eye  is  found  of  his  handiwork,  and  where- 
,soever  sight  is  preserved  by  his  skill,  let  the  owner  of  such 
an  instrument  know  that  if  he  can  see,  God  can,  and  as 
surely  as  he  sees,  God  does. 

If  it  is  possible  for  us  to  beheld  many  objects  distinctly 
at  once,  it  is  not  impossible  for  God  to  behold  more.     If 


32  DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF? 

he  has  given  us  an  eye  to  look  from  earth  to  heaven,  then 
his  eye  sees  from  heaven  to  earth.  If  I  can  see  accurately, 
God's  inspection  is  much  more  impartial.  And  if  he  has 
given  me  the  power  of  adjusting  my  imperfect  vision  to  the 
varying  lights  and  shades  of  this  changing  scene,  let  me 
not  dream  for  a  moment  that  he  is  destitute  of  a  corre- 
sponding power  of  investigating  difficulties,  and  penetra- 
ting darknesses,  and  bringing  to  light  hidden  works  and  secret 
things.  God  is  light.  In  him  is  no  darkness  at  all. 
Neither  is  there  any  creature  that  is  not  manifest  in  his 
sight,  but  all  things  are  naked  and  opened  to  the  eyes  of 
him  with  whom  I  have  to  do.  He  has  seen  all  my  past 
life — my  faults,  my  follies,  and  my  crimes.  When  I 
thought  myself  in  darkness  and  privacy,  God's  eye  was 
upon  me  there.  In  the  turmoil  of  business,  God's  eye  was 
upon  me.  In  the  crowd  of  my  ungod'y  companions,  God's 
eye  was  upon  me.  In  the  darkness  and  solitude  of  night, 
God's  eye  was  upon  me.  And  God's  eye  is  on  me  now, 
and  will  follow  me  from  this  house,  and  will  watch  me  and 
observe  all  my  actions,  on — on — on — while  God  lives,  and 
wheresoever  God's  creation  extends. 

"  O  God,  Thou  has  searched  and  known  me  ; 

Thou  knowest  my  down  sitting  and  mine  uprising; 

Thou  understandest  my  thoughts  afar  off. 

Thou  compassest  my  path  and  my  lying  down, 

And  art  acquainted  with  all  my  ways. 

For  there  is  not  a  word  in  my  tongue, 

But,  lo !  0  Lord,  Thou  knowest  it  altogether. 

Thou  hast  beset  me  behind  and  before,  and  laid  thine  hand 

upon  me. 
Such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful  for  me  ! 
It  is  high,  I  can  not  attain  unto  it ; 
Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  Spirit? 
And  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence  ? 


DID  THE  WORLD  MAKE  ITSELF  ?  33 

If  1  ascend  up  into  haaven,  Thou  art  there, 

If  I  mike  my  bed  in  hell,  behold,  Thou  art  there  I 

If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 

And  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea, 

Even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me, 

And  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me. 

If  I  say,  'Surely  the  darkness  shall  cover  me,* 

Even  the  night  shall  be  light  about  me  ; 

Yea  the  darkness  hideth  not  from  thee, 

But  the  night  shineth  as  the  day, 

The  darkness  and  the  liqrht  are  both  alike  to  Thee." 


CHAPTER    II. 


Was  Your    Mothef^ a   Monkey? 


In  the  previous  chapter  we  saw  the  evidences  of  Grod's 
skill  and  wisdom  in  the  adaptations  of  nature,  fitting  the 
organs  of  animals  for  hearing,  walking,  and  eating,  and 
especially  in  the  structure  of  the  human  eye.  This  has 
long  been  owned  by  candid  minds  as  an  unanswerable  ar- 
gument, demonstrating  the  being  of  God  by  the  works  of 
his  hands.  But  since  that  chapter  was  written  a  school 
of  scientists  has  arisen,  of  whom  Mr.  Darwin  is  at  present 
the  most  popular,  claiming  to  be  able  to  show  how  all  the 
species  of  living  things  can  evolve,  not  only  their  eyes,  but 
their  legs  and  wings  and  lungs,  and  every  part  of  them, 
from  a  little  bit  of  primeval  life  stuff,  called  protoplasm, 
by  the  influence  of  Natural  Selection.  Mr.  Darwin  owns 
that  the  formation  of  an  eye  is  rather  a  tough  job  for  a 
little  pin  point  germ  of  protoplasm  ;  but  he  has  no  doubt 
that  it  has  been  done,  and  he  writes  several  books  to  show 
us  how.  We  propose  to  look  into  this  self-evolving  pro- 
cess, as  he  and  his  brother  evolutionists  describe  their 
theory. 

It  is  necessary,  right  here  at  the  outset,  to  distinguish 
the  theory  of  the  evolutionists  from  the  great  fact  of  evo- 
lution.     Almighty  God   created  the  world,  not   only  for 

his  own  pleasure,  but  also  for  his  own  glory,  that  men  and 

(34) 


WAS  YCUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  35 

angels  might  learn  to  know  him  by  his  works.  Creation  is 
thus  God's  great  object  lesson  for  men  and  angels  to  learn. 
But  learning  is  a  process,  gradual,  slow,  from  one  step  to 
another.  Therefore  the  object  lesson  must  not  be  precip- 
it^ited  all  in  a  heap  upon  the  infantile  intellects  of  the 
learners,  but  unfolded  by  degrees.  Geologists  assure  us 
that  so  it  was  in  the  past;  that  first  the  lifeless  strata  were 
deposited;  next,  light  was  evolved^  afterward,  fishes,  aud 
marine  reptiles,  and  birds;  then  came  the  carboniferous  or 
plant  era;  afterward  the  mammalia;  last  of  all  man. 
You  observe  here  an  ascending  scale  of  creation,  beginning 
with  first  principles  and  simple  forms,  and  ascending  to 
the  most  complicated ;  a  series  of  experiments  in  God's 
great  lecture-room,  illustrative  of  the  various  steps  of  the 
evolution  of  the  divine  idea.  But  six  thousand  years  be- 
fore geology  was  born  Moses  described  this  same  evolution 
of  creation,  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis.  As  he  could 
not  have  learned  it  from  any  science  known  in  his  day,  God 
Himself  must  have  shown  it  to  him. 

The  divine  idea  is  still  in  process  of  evolution  for  our 
instruction.  We  behold  it  in  the  continual  formation  of 
new  strata  by  the  destruction  of  the  old  ;  in  the  chemical 
combinations  of  the  elements  of  the  air,  sea,  and  earth;  in 
the  evolution  of  the  grass  from  the  seed,  and  of  the  oak 
from  the  acorn  ;  in  the  development  of  the  insect  germ 
into  the  caterpillar,  and  the  butterfly;  in  the  hatching  of 
the  egg  into  the  chicken  ;  and  in  the  growth  of  the  infant 
into  the  man.  We  observe  also  a  divine  development  of 
society,  an  advance  of  civilization,  a  providential  guidance 
of  history,  and  a  fall  and  disorder  among  mankind,  with  a 
process  of  redemption,  medical,  educational,  political  and 
religious,  for  the  human  race.  The  whole  process,  there- 
fore, of  the  creation,  natural  history,  and  moral  government 
of  the  world,  is  the  development  of  a  divine  idea,  according 
to  a  divine  plan,  by  the  direct  or  mediate  efficacy  jf  divine 


36  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

power,  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  divine  purpose  as 
revealed  to  us  in  the  divine  word,  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
Galen  taught  that  the  study  of  physiology  was.  a  divine 
hymn.  This  divine  developirent  is  to  be  clearly  and 
sharply  distinguished  from  the  atheistic  theory  of  evolu- 
tion.    They  differ  in  the  following  particulars : 

1.  The  divine  development  of  the  world  is  a  great  fact; 
the  theory  of  atheistic  evolution  is  only  a  baseless  theory, 
a  fiction. 

2.  The  divine  development  begins  in  the  beginning,  with 
God,  creating  the  heavens  and  the  earth;  but  the  theory  of 
atheistic  evolution  has  no  beginning,  asserting  the  eternal 
existence  of  a  changing  world. 

8.  The  divine  development  is  the  unfolding  of  an  intel- 
ligent plan,  showing  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends  for 
the  accomplishment  of  a  purpose  ;  the  atheistic  theory  of 
evolution  denies  plan,  purpose,  adaptation  and  final  cause. 

4.  The  divine  development  is  conducted,  and  continually 
reinforced  by  the  will  of  the  Omnipotent  God  ,  the  athe- 
istic development  evolves  only  the  forces  of  matter. 

5.  The  divine  development  has  a  moral  character,  and 
terminates  in  the  highest  holiness  and  happiness  of  all 
obedient  men  and  angels;  but  the  atheistic  development 
contemplates  and  promises  only  the  evolution  of  animal  in- 
stinct and  passions,  the  eternal  death  of  the  individual,  and, 
for  the  universe,  only  purposeless  cycles  of  progress,  and 
catastrophies  of  ruin. 

In  this  chapter  we  diRcuso  only  the  theory  of  atheistic 
evolution.  In  the  discussion  of  all  questions  affecting 
human  life  it  is  advantageous  to  trace  them  to  their  origin, 
and  to  follow  them  out  to  their  practical  results.  Thus  we  get 
a  clear  view  of  the  whole  subject,  and  are  enabled  to  assign  to 
it  its  proper  influence.  It  is  also  a  great  benefit  to  the  mass 
of  mankind  to  conduct  such  discussions  in  plain  language, 
and  to  translate  the  roundabout  phrases,  and  the  Latinized 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  37 

words  of  scientific  men,  as  much  as  we  can,  into  the  vulgar 
tongue  ;  to  state  the  subjects  of  discussion  so  as  to  be 
understood  of  the  people.  So  we  shall  put  the  whole  busi- 
ness of  Darwinism  and  development  before  you,  reader,  in 
a  nutshell,  by  simply  asking  you  the  question  at  the  head 
of  this  chapter,  "  Was  your  mother  a  monkey  ?" 

What  a  question ! 

Well,  then,  your  grandmother  ?  her  grandmother  ?  or 
does  it  seem  less  offensive,  or  more  likely  to  you  to  go 
back  some  thousands  of  years,  and  say  your  forefathers 
were  apes  ? 

That  is  exactly  what  Mr.  Darwin  says  when  we  translate 
his  scientific  language  into  the  vulgar  tongue :  "  Th^  early 
progenitors  of  man  were  no  doubt  once  covered  with  hair, 
both  sexes  having  beards ;  their  ears  were  pointed  and 
capable  of  movement ;  and  their  bodies  were  provided 
with  a  tail  having  the  proper  muscles.  The  foot,  judging 
from  the  condition  of  the  great  toe  in  the  foetus,  was  then 
prehensile,  and  our  progenitors,  no  doubt,  were  arboreal 
in  their  habits,  frequenting  some  warm  forest-clad  land. 
The  males  were  provided  with  great  canine  teeth,  which 
served  them  as  formidable  weapons."*  This  ancient  form 
"if  seen  by  a  naturalist,  would  undoubtedly  have  been 
ranked  as  an  ape  or  a  monkey.  And  as  man,  under  a  gene- 
alogical point  of  view,  belongs  to  the  Catarhine  or  Old 
World  stock  (of  monkeys),  we  must  conclude,  however 
much  the  conclusion  may  revolt  our  pride,  that  our  early 
progenitors  would  have  been  properly  thus  designated,  "f 
So  here  you  have  your  genealogy,  name  and  thing  fully 
described.  Mr.  Darwin  thinks  it  is  quite  an  honorable  pedi- 
gree: "  Thus  we  have  given  to  man  a  pedigree  of  prodi^^*- 
ious  length,  but  not,  it  maybe  said,  of  noble  quality.  *  H«  5{c 

-The  Descent  of  Man,  p.  198,  American  Edition. 
tXhc  Descent  of  Man,  p.  191,  Am.  Ed. 


38  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

UlIgss  we  willfully  close  our  eyes,  we  may,  with  our  pres- 
ent knowledge,  approximately  recognize  our  parentage,  nor 
need  we  feel  ashamed  of  it.  The  most  humble  organism 
is  something  much  higher  than  the  inorganic  dust  under 
our  feet;  and  no  one  with  an  unbiased  mind  can  study 
any  living  creature,  however  humble,  without  being  struck 
with  enthusiasm  at  its  marvelous  structure  and  properties."* 
There  are  people,  however,  who  do  not  grow  enthusiastic 
at  the  idea  of  their  long-tailed  progenitors ;  but  there  is 
no  accounting  for  taste  in  such  matters  ! 

For  elderly  people,  who  do  not  take  so  enthusiastically 
to  monkeys  as  his  junior  readers,  Mr.  Darwin  has  provided 
a  rathdr  less  gymnastic  ancestry.  How  would  you  like  to 
have  a  fish  for  your  forefather?  If  it  were  one  of  Nep- 
tune's noble  tritons,  or  the  Philistine  fish-god,  Dagon,  or  a 
mermaid,  it  might  not  be  so  repulsive  as  the  ape  ;  or  even 
a  twenty-pound  salmon,  flashing  its  silver  and  blue  in  the 
sunlight  as  it  spins  the  line  off  the  reel,  might  not  be  so 
utterly  disgusting  as  the  monkey  burlesque  of  humanity. 
But,  alas  !  Mr.  Diirwin  has  been  sent  to  this  proud 
nineteenth  century  as  the  prophet  to  teach  us  humility, 
and  here  is  the  scientific  statement  of  the  structure  of  our 
fishy  forefathers:  "At  a  still  earlier  period  the  progen- 
itors of  man  must  have  been  aquatic  in  their  habits,  for 
morphology  plainly  tells  us  that  our  lungs  consist  of  a 
modified  swim  bladder  which  once  siirved  as  a  float  These 
early  predecessors  of  man  thus  seen  in  the  dim  recesses  of 
time  must  have  been  as  lowly  organized  as  the  Lancelot  or 
amphibioxus,  or  even  still  more  lovflj  organized."* 

That  certainly  is  a  very  humble  origin.  We  are  not, 
however,  by  any  means  to  the  end  of  our  pedigree.  Mr. 
Darwin  says  that  your  codfish  arist  )cracy  are  descended 
from  a  race  of  squirts — the  squirts  which  you  picked  up  en 


*  Descent  of  Man,  p.  199,  Am.  Ed. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  39 

tte  shore  and  squeezed,  when  you  were  a  boy,  discharging 
these  primitive  Babcock  Extinguishers  upon  your  playfel- 
lows, irreverently  regardless  of  the  harm  done  the  poor 
sq^uirt,  the  ancestor  of  the  human  race.  If  you  doubt  it, 
hore  is  the  latest  deliverance  of  infallible  science  upon  the 
subject.  He  describes  the  Ascidians  :  "They  hardly  ap- 
pear like  animals,  and  consist  of  a  simple  tough  leathery 
sack,  with  two  small  projecting  orifices.  They  belong  to 
the  Molluscoida  of  Huxley,  a  lower  division  of  the  great 
family  of  the  MoUusca  ;  but  they  have  recently  been  placed 
by  some  naturalists  among  the  vermes  or  worms.  Their 
larvae  somewhat  resemble  tadpoles  in  shape,  and  have  the 
power  of  swimming  freely  about.  >!<  *  *  We  should 
thus  bo  justified  in  believing  tfiat,  at  an  extremely  remote 
period,  a  group  of  animals  existed  resembling  in  many  re- 
spects the  larv99  of  our  present  Ascidians,  which  diverged 
into  two  great  branches,  the  <  ne  retrograding  in  develop- 
ment and  producing  the  present  class  of  Ascidians,  the 
other  rising  to  the  crown  and  summit/of  the  animal  king- 
dom, by  giving  birth  to  the  vertebrata."*  Thus  it  appears 
that  Mr.  Darwin  deduces  his  origin,  and  that  of  mankind 
in  general,  from  one  of  these  Ascidians,  or,  in  plain  English, 
makes  them  a  race  of  squirts. 

The  notion  of  evolution  is  a  belief  that  all  living  beings, 
plants  as  well  as  animals,  have  not  been  created,  but,  like 
Topsy,  just  grew,  from  the  very  smallest  germs  or  spores. 
Evolutionists  inform  us  that  all  kinds  of  organisms  have 
been  evolved  from  four  or  five  primeval  germs  or  spores; 
or  more  consistently  with  their  great  principle,  that  the 
simple  gave  birth  to  the  differentiated,  from  one  primeval 
germ  or  egg.  Mr.  Darwin  alleges  four  or  five  primal 
forms,  acknowledging  that  analogy  would  lead  him  up  to 
one.     But  other  members  of  this  school  consistently  and 


-Descent  of  Man,  107,  Am.  Ed. 


40  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

t 

boldly  follow  up  the  stream  to  its  fountain,  and  allege  a 
single  primeval  living  seed  as  the  origin  of  all  living  things, 
and  that  this  must  have  been  a  microscopic  animalcule,  or 
plant  spore,  of  the  very  lowest  order,  which,  multiplying 
its  kind,  gave  birth  to  improved  and  enlarged  oflfspring; 
and  they,  in  their  turn,  grew,  and  multiplied,  and  dififeren- 
tiated  into  varieties;  and  so,  in  the  course  of  endless  ages, 
the  poorer  sorts  perishing  and  the  better  sorts  prospering? 
the  world  became  filled  with  its  existing  populations,  with- 
out any  new  creative  acts  of  God,  and  without  any  particu- 
lar providential  care  over  the  new  species. 

The  particular  process  according  to  which  this  multipli- 
cation and  improvement  took  place,  Mr.  Darwin  calls 
Natural  Selection.  Every  creature  tends  to  increase  and 
multiply;  and  the  very  slowest  breeders  would  soon  fill 
the  earth,  were  their  multiplication  not  checked  by  hunger, 
by  the  attacks  of  enemies,  and  by  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. But  all  are  not  born  alike  strong,  or  swift,  or  of 
the  same  color;  some  of  the  same  brood  are  better  fitted 
to  escape  enemies,  or  to  fight  the  battle  of  life,  than  others. 
These  will  survive,  while  the  weak  ones  perish.  This  Mr. 
Wallace  calls,  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  They  will  trans- 
mit their  superior  size,  or  swiftness,  or  better  color,  or 
whatever  superiority  they  possess,  to  their  oiFspring.  The 
process  will  go  on  in  successive  generations,  each  add- 
ing an  infinitesimal  quantity  to  the  stock  gained  by  the 
past  generation;  just  as  breeders  of  improved  stock  in- 
crease the  weight  of  cattle  by  breeding  from  the  largest; 
or  breeders  of  race-horses  increase  the  speed  by  breeding 
from  the  swiftest.  In  this  way  varieties  from  the  same 
family  will  grow  into  different  species.  And,  as  only  those 
differences  which  are  beneficial  to  the  animal  are  preserved, 
they  will  grow  into  improved  species;  and,  as  variations  of 
all  sorts  take  place,  so  all  sorts  of  varieties  and  species 
arise  in  process  of  time.      All  will  thus  tend  to  perfect 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  r  41 

themselves  according  to  the  laws  of  nature,  and  without 
any  special  oversight  or  care  of  God,  or  of  anybody  but 
Natural  Selection ;  which  Mr.  Darwin  takes  special  care  to 
describe  as  an  unintelligent  selector.  He  defines  the  na- 
ture which  selects  to  be  "the  aggregate  action  and  product 
of  natural  laws,"  and  these  laws  are  "the  sequences  of 
events  as  ascertained  by  us."  He  ridicules  the  idea  of 
Grod's  special  endowment  of  the  fantail  pigeon  with  addi- 
tional feathers,  or  of  the  bull  dog's  jaws  with  strength, 
and  says,  "  But  if  we  give  up  the  principle  in  the  one  case, 
if  we  do  not  admit  that  the  variations  of  the  primeval  dog 
were  intentionally  guided  in  order,  for  instance,  that  the 
greyhound,  that  perfect  image  of  symmetry  and  vigor, 
might  be  formed ;  no  shadow  of  reason  can  be  assigned  for 
the  belief  that  variations  alike  in  nature,  and  the  results  of 
the  same  general  laws  which  have  been  the  groundwork 
through  Natural  Selection  of  the  most  perfectly  adapted 
animals  in  the  world,  man  included,  were  intentionally  and 
specially  guided."*  This,  then,  is  the  grand  distinctive 
difference  of  Mr.  Darwin's  mode  of  producing  the  various 
animals;  namely,  that  it  is  unintelligent,  their  variations 
are  not  designed  nor  intended  by  the  Creator,  but  they  are 
the  results  of  a  method  of  trial  and  error,  producing  a  hit- 
and-miss  pattern.  The  failures  all  perish,  and  the  successes 
live  and  prosper;  but  there  is  no  intentional  or  special 
guidance  of  God  in  the  business.  And  the  business  in- 
cludes the  whole  process  of  peopling  the  globe,  from  the 
creation  of  the  first  four  or  five  germs  down  to  the  last 
formation  of  human  society.  God  is  thus  dismissed  from 
the  greatest  part  of  the  world's  life,  including  all  human 
affiiirs.  This  is  not  exactly  atheism  in  theory,  but  practic- 
ally it  amounts  to  much  the  same  thing. 
Jt  is   this  excommunication  of  God's  agency  from   the 

*The  Variations  of  Animals,  etc.,  Vol.  II.  page  515. 


42  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

management  of  tlie  world,  and  especially  from  human  af- 
fairs, by  Mr.  Darwin's  method,  which  has  so  commended 
his  books  to  the  ungodly  world.  There  is  a  general  agree- 
ment among  this  class  of  writers,  that  Mr.  Darwin  has  d'o- 
stroyed  the  basis  of  the  argument  for  the  being  of  God 
from  design  as  displayed  in  the  adaptations  of  birds  and 
beasts  to  their  conditions.  Mr.  Huxley  says  that  "when 
he  first  read  Mr.  Darwin's  book,  what  struck  him  most  for- 
cibly was  the  conviction  that  teleology,  as  commonly  under- 
stood, had  received  its  death  blow  at  Mr.  Darwin's  hands."* 
"For  the  notion  that  every  organism  has  been  created  as  it 
is,  and  launched  straight  at  a  purpose,  Mr.  Darwin  substi- 
tutes the  conception  of  something  which  may  fairly  be 
termed  a  method  of  trial  and  error.  Organisms  vary  in- 
cessantly; of  these  variations  the  few  meet  with  surround- 
ing conditions  which  suit  them  and  thrive ;  the  many  are 
unsuited  and  become  extinguished.  *  *  *  For  the 
teleologist  (the  Christian)  an  organism  exists,  because  it  was 
made  for  the  conditions  in  which  it  was  found.  For  the 
Darwinian  an  organism  exists,  because  out  of  many  of  its 
kind  it  is  the  only  one  which  has  been  able  to  persist  in 
the  conditions  in  which  it  was  found.  *  H^  *  If  we  ap- 
prehend the  spirit  of  the  Origin  of  Species  rightl}^,  then 
nothing  can  be  more  entirely  and  absolutely  opposed  to 
teleology,  as  it  is  commonly  understood,  than  the  Darwinian 
theory."t  Prof  Haeckel  argues  to  the  same  purpose  that 
Darwin's  theory  leads  inevitably  to  Atheism  aud  Material- 
ism. Dr.  Buchner  says  of  Darwin's  theory,  "It  is  the 
most  thoroughly  naturalistic  that  can  be  imagined,  and  far 
more  atheistic  than  that  of  his  decried  predecessor,  La- 
marck." Carl  Vogt  also  commends  it  because  "It  turns  the 
Creator,  and  his  occasional  intervention  in  the  revolution 
of  the  earth  and  in  the  production  of  species,  without  any 

*Lay  Sermons,  p.  30. 
f  Lay  Sermons,  303. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  48 

hesitation  out  of  doors,  inasmuch  as  it  does  not  leave  the 
smallest  room  for  the  agency  of  such  a  Being.  The  first 
living  germ  being  granted,  out  of  it  the  creation  develops 
itself  progressively  by  Natural  Selection,  through  all  the 
geologic  periods  of  our  planet,  by  the  simple  law  of  de- 
scent. No  new  species  arise  by  creation,  and  none  perishes 
by  annihilation ;  the  natural  cause  of  things,  the  process  of 
evolution  of  all  organisms,  and  of  the  earth  itself,  is  of 
itself  sufficient  for  the  production  of  all  we  see.  Thus  man 
is  not  a  special  creation,  produced  in  a  different  way,  and 
distinct  from  other  animals,  endowed  with  an  individual 
soul,  and  animated  by  the  breath  of  God;  on  the  contrary, 
man  is  only  the  highest  product  of  the  progressive  evolu- 
tion of  animal  life,  springing  from  the  group  of  apes  next 
below  him."* 

Whether,  therefore,  Mr.  Darwin  himself  intends  his 
theory  to  be  atheistic  or  not,  it  has  had  the  misfortune  to 
be  so  viewed  by  the  greater  number  of  its  supporters;  and, 
accordingly,  it  is  this  view  of  it  which  we  shall  keep  prom- 
inent in  the  following  discussion.  Mr.  Darwin  does  un- 
doubtedly intend  his  theory  to  be  antagonistic  to  the  Bible 
account  of  creation  and  providence,  and  an  improvement 
upon  it;  and,  whether  atheistic  or  not,  it  is  undoubtedly 
anti- Christian. 

/.    The  History  of  the  Theory. 

The  first  thing  which  strikes  a  cl^mmon  person  on  first 
hearing  this  theory  is  that  it  is  a  very  queer  notion  for  any 
Christian  man  to  invent.  We  are  naturally  curious  to 
know  how  a  man,  educated  in  a  Christian  country,  could 
have  fallen  into  it.  But  it  is,  in  fact,  no  new  discovery, 
but  an  old  heathen  superstition.  Some  four  hundred  years 
before  Christ,  when  the  world  had  almost  wholly  apostatized 

*Cited  by  H  dge  in  "  What  is  Darwinism? "    Page  73,  etc. 


44  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

into  idolatry,  Democritus,  among  the  Greeks,  became  of- 
fended with  the  vulgar  heathen  gods,  and  set  himself  to 
invent  a  plan  of  the  world  without  them.  From  Eastern 
travelers  the  G-reeks  knew  that  the  Brahmins,  in  India, 
had  a  theory  of  the  world  developing  itself  from  a  pri- 
meval egg.  He  set  himself  to  refine  upon  it,  and  imagined 
virtually  the  Nebular  Hypothesis.  He  said  that  all  mat- 
ter consisted  of  very  small  atoms,  dancing  about  in  all  di- 
rections, from  all  eternity,  and  which  at  last  happened  into 
the  various  forms  of  the  present  world. 

The  ancient  Phoenicians  held  a  theory  that  all  life  was 
from  the  sea;  and  that,  as  the  wet  mud  produces  all  sorts 
of  herbs  in  spring  now,  so  originally  it  produced  all  man- 
ner of  animals.  They  worshiped  it  as  a  god,  and  called 
it  Mot,  or  Mud.  Anaximander  took  up  the  theory  and 
carried  it  out  in  true  Darwinian  style,  alleging  that  the 
first  men  sprang  from  the  ground  watered  by  the  sea,  and 
that  they  had  spines  like  sea  urchins;  evidently  deriving 
them  from  the  Radiates.  Lucretius  still  further  developed 
the  theory  in  a  poem  in  six  books.  The  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity, however,  hindered  the  spread  of  the  doctrine,  as 
Mr.  Tyndall  feelingly  laments,  until  the  Saracens  over- 
spread the  East,  when  some  of  them,  it  seems,  favored  it. 
But  it  seems  to  be  an  unlucky  dogma,  since,  with  the  down- 
fall of  the  power  of  thj  false  prophet,  the  anti  Christian 
form  of  science  went  down  again. 

The  dogma  of  the  transmutation  of  species  reappeared, 
however,  in  the  Romish  Church  in  a  religious  form;  the 
old  heathenism,  which  had  never  been  wholly  banished 
from  the  minds  of  men,  thus  reasserting  itself.  About  the 
tenth  century  some  began  to  teach  that  the  bread  of  the 
communion  of  the  Lord's  Supper  was  transubstantiated, 
and  the  wine  also,  into  the  body,  and  blood,  and  soul,  and 
divinity  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  This  is  probably  the 
most  complete  transmutation  of  species  which  has  ever  been 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  45 

imagiaed  or  described.  The  evolution  of  bread  into  Deity- 
is  only  equaled  by  Mr.  Tyndall's  endowment  of  matter 
with  all  the  potencies  of  life  and  thought;  a  miracle  dif- 
fering from  the  popish  transubstantiation  only  in  the  ele- 
ment of  time,  but  in  its  essential  nature  equally  supernatu- 
ral. The  dogma  excited  great  discussion  for  centuries,  and 
produced  as  many  theories  of  transubstantiation  as  we  now 
observe  of  evolution,  keeping  philosophic  minds  and  pens 
busy  till  the  dawn  of  modern  science  after  the  Reforma- 
tion. 

La  Place  threw  out  the  Nebular  Hypothesis,  which  is 
substantially  Democritus'  concourse  of  atoms,  only  La  Place 
endeavored  to  substitute  circular  motions  under  the  law  of 
gravitation,  instead  of  Democritus'  chance  arrangement,  as 
a  sufficient  cause  for  the  formation  and  motions  of  planets. 
Herschel's  discovery  of  the  nebulae  was  hastily  laid  hold 
of  by  a  number  of  writers,  and  notably  by  the  author  of 
the  Vestiges  of  Creation,  as  furnishing  the  primeval 
matter  necessary  for  world-making;  and  till  the  spectro- 
scopic discoveries  of  the  composite  nature  of  gaseous  neb- 
ulae, they  were  claimed  as  specimens  of  worlds  in  process 
of  formation.  La  Place  supposed  his  nebulous  matter  to 
be  gas  in  a  state  of  white-heat  combustion,  compared  with 
which  the  heat  of  the  hottest  fire  would  be  a  cool  bath.  In 
no  other  way  could  he  dissipate  the  world's  substance  into 
sufficient  thinness  for  his  vortices.  But  Spencer  saw  that 
this  tremendous  heat  would  be  fatal  to  all  forms  of  life,  and 
especially  to  sensitive  beings;  and  Tyndall  shows  us  that  this 
original  matter  must  have  had  all  the  potencies  of  life  and 
sensation,  and  a  potency  of  sensation  means  being  able  to 
feel.  Now  the  worst  fate  threatened  against  sinners  in  the 
Bible  is  a  place  in  the  lake  burning  with  fire  and  brimstone, 
which  burns  at  500°  Fahrenheit;  but  the  temperature  of 
the  original  fire-mist  was  a  thousand  times  hotter.  Some 
of  these  scientists  call  such  a  fate  as  the  Bible  threatens 


46  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY? 

against  the  wicked,  cruel.  But  here  is  a  hell  manufactured 
by  the  evolutionists  infinitely  worse  than  that  of  the  Bible; 
ff^v  the  hell  of  the  Bible  is  only  for  the  wicked,  but  the 
evolutionists'  hell  is  indiscriminately  for  all,  saints  and  sin- 
ners, and  all  sorts  of  creatures,  innocent  as  babes  unborn 
of  iny  crime;  yet  they,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  the 
matter  containing  all  the  potency  of  their  sensations,  that 
is  their  power  of  feeling,  were  born  in  this  hell,  and  kept 
in  it  from  all  eternity,  until  it  pleased  the  evolutionists  to 
begin  to  cool  it  down  a  little.  However,  it  was  rather 
scientific  than  benevolent  reasons  which  induced  Mr.  Spen- 
ser to  reverse  the  order  of  procedure,  and  make  his  star 
iust  cold  to  begin  with,  and  to  heat  it  up  by  condensation 
and  pressure  to  about  the  temperature  of  molten  iron; 
which  was  still  an  uncomfortably  warm  lodging  for  Mr. 
Tyndall's  potencies  of  sensation  for  some  millions  of  years. 
The  division  of  opinion  about  the  original  nebulae,  how- 
ever, still  prevails;  some  evolutionists  of  the  old  fashioned 
order  still  taking  their  nebulae  hot,  while  others,  with 
Spencer,  prefer  it  cold,  with  star  dust. 

As  to  the  Spontaneous  Generation  of  life,  there  has  been 
less  progress  of  opinion,  though  great  variety  has  been 
exhibited.  Ovid  and  Virgil  describe  the  way  in  which  a 
carcass  produces  bees.  It  was  generally  believed  that 
putrid  meat  produced  the  maggots,  till  the  blow-flies  were 
discovered  laying  their  eggs.  Then  it  was  alleged  that  the 
entozoa,  the  worms  found  in  the  bodies  of  animals,  were 
self-produced,  without  eggs,  until  the  microscope  discovered 
that  one  could  lay  60,000  eggs.  Strauss,  however,  adhered 
to  the  idea  that  as  the  tapeworm,  as  he  supposed,  was  self- 
produced,  so  man  was  originated  by  the  primeval  slime.- 
So  also  Professor  Vogt,  and  M.  Tremaux  develop  their 
animals  from  the  land,  and  the  latter  accounts  for  their 
various  qualities  from  the  various  qualities  of  their  re- 
spective  birthplaces,   the  crop  being  conditioned  by    the 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY?  47 

loil.  But  Mr.  Darwin  derives  all  his  organisms  from  the 
sea.  Electricity  in  its  galvanic  form  was  for  a  whi.e  the 
agent  to  fire  the  earthly  or  marine  mud  with  the  vital  spark  ; 
and  Mr.  Crosse's  experiments  were  supposed  instances  of 
the  creation  of  acarii  or  mites  in  the  battery  bath,  until  it 
was  found  that  the  bath  contained  eggs  and  the  electricity 
only  hatched  them.  Some  English  evolutionists  still  ad- 
here to  the  theory  of  Spontaneous  Generation,  but  the 
leading  Germans  deny  any  instance  of  it  being  known. 
Huxley  denies  that  any  case  of  it  has  been  established  as 
now  practicable ;  but  supposes  that  if  we  could  have  been 
present  at  the  begiuDing  of  the  world,  when  all  the  ele- 
ments were  young  and  vigorous,  we  should  have  seen  the 
chemical  elements  of  the  earth  and  air  combining  to  form 
living  beings,  by  the  mere  powers  of  their  nature.  If  that 
were  the  fact,  it  would  be  a  fact  unique  and  unparalleled, 
utterly  out  of  the  course  of  nature,  and  so  as  contrary  to 
the  theory  of  evolution  as  if  these  living  beings  had  been 
inspired  with  life  by  Almighty  God. 

So  the  theory  here  again  is  divided.  Two  utterly  irre- 
concilable ideas  of  the  origin  of  life  claim  our  belief — the 
theories  of  Biogenesis,  and  of  ^biogenesis,  the  one  says 
all  life  is  from  the  egg,  and  has  always  been  so;  and  so  we 
have  an  eternal  begetting  of  finite  creatures;  the  other  al- 
leges the  spontaneous  beginning  of  plants  and  animals;  a 
fact,  if  it  be  a  fact,  as  unparalleled  as  creation,  and  far 
more  miraculous. 

As  to  the  history  of  the  progress  of  the  germs  of  plants 
and  animals  thus  produced,  we  find  still  greater  diversities 
of  opinion,  not  only  as  to  details,  but  as  to  principles.  Each 
inventor  has  added  to,  or  altered,  the  original  idea  of  evo- 
lution, until  it  has  been  burdened  with  more  improvements 
and  new  patents  than  the  sewing  machine ;  only  the  evo- 
lutionary improvements  bid  fair  to  improve  the  theory  out 
of  existence.     We  hnve  seen  M.  Tremaux,  with  the  au- 


48  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

tochthonie  Athenians,  deriving  the  powers  of  improve- 
ment of  plants  and  animals  from  their  native  soils.  La- 
marck on  the  contrary,  inspired  all  his  plants  and  animals — 
fungi  and  frogs,  and  elephants  and  apes — with  the  desire  of 
getting  on  in  the  world  and  improving  their  limbs  by  exer- 
cise ;  so  the  greyhound  grew  slim  and  fleet  by  running  ;  the 
giraffe's  neck  elongated  by  reaching  up  to  the  branches  of 
the  trees  on  which  it  browsed,  and  the  duck  acquired  web 
feet  by  swimming  Others  attributed  the  evolution  of  dif- 
ferences to  external  conditions.  The  negro  became  black 
by  exposure  to  the  tropical  sun ;  the  arctic  hare  received 
its  coat  of  thick  white  fur  from  the  cold  climate,  and  the 
buffalo  and  camel  their  humps  of  fat  from  the  sterility  of 
their  pastures  at  certain  seasons,  and  the  consequent  need 
of  a  reserved  store  of  fat  for  food  for  the  rest  of  the  body. 
Mr  Darwin's  doctrine  of  Natural  Selection  refuses  La- 
marck's notion  of  any  conscious  attempt  of  the  plant  or  ani- 
mal at  improvement;  and  equally  denies  the  power  of  ex- 
ternal nature  to  improve  anything,  except  by  killing  off 
poor  specimens,  save  in  that  very,  limited  range  where  good 
pastures  make  fat  animals  for  a  season  or  two.  An  innate 
power  of  accidental  variation  to  a  very  small  amount,  and 
the  slow  but  constant  adding  up  of  profitable  variations 
during  countless  generations,  with  the  killing  off"  of  the  un- 
improved breeds  by  Natural  Selection,  is  his  patent;  popula- 
tor  and  improver.  But  this  theory  is  too  slow  for  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  so  neither  Huxley,  nor  Parsons,  nor 
Mivart,  nor  even  Wallace,  accepts  the  doctrine  as  Darwin 
propounds  it  It  is,  in  fact,  already  becoming  unpopular 
among  scientific  men.  Lyell  proposed  the  origination  of 
new  species  by  leaps;  as  we  see  great  geniuses  born  of 
commonplace  parents;  and  Huxley  supports  that  opinion, 
and  Parsons,  Owen  and  Mivart  coincide  in  this  inexplicable 
explanation.  The  author  of  the  Vestiges  of  Creation 
accounts  for  improved  species  from  a  prolongation  of  the 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  49 

period  of  gestation.  But  Hyatt  and  Cope  derive  them  from 
quite  the  contrary  process — accelerated  development  of 
gestation.  MM.  Ferris  and  Kolliker  derive  them  from  par- 
thenogenesis, a  mode  of  genesis  of  which  our  world  offers 
no  example    whatever. 

The  origin  of  man,  with  all  his  mental  powers  and 
religious  aspirations,  is  the  great  difficulty.  Mr.  Mivart 
excludes  man  wholly  from  the  influence  of  Natural 
Selection,  from  the  time  he  acquired  a  soul.  Mr.  Wal- 
lace, rejecting  the  action  of  one  Supreme  Intelligence 
for  everything  but  the  origin  of  universal  forces  and 
laws,  "Contemplates  the  pos-ibllity  that  the  development 
of  the  essentially  human  portions  of  man's  structure  and 
intellect  may  have  been  determined  by  the  directing  in- 
fluence of  some  higher  intelligent  beings  acting  through 
natural  and  universal  laws;"*  i.  6.,  the  gods  of  the  old 
heathen  nations.  And  so  after  twenty-two  centuries  wan- 
dering over  the  world,  we  have  got  back  to  where  Democ- 
rltus  started  from— to  pure  old  heathenism. 

After  shch  a  history  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  and  in 
presence  of  such  contradictory  presentations  by  its  advo- 
cates, I  need  scarcely  say  that  it  is  by  no  means  an  estab- 
lished scientific  principle,  were  it  not  for  the  insolent  man- 
ner in  which  some  of  them  assert  it  as  scientifically  demon- 
strated; and  denounce  the  Bible  doctrine  of  creation  as  mere 
superstition,  "A  featherbed  of  respectable  and  respected 
tradition,"  and  warn  off  Christians  from  any  attempt  to  inves- 
tigate theories  of  cosmogony;  and  overbear  the  ignorant  by 
the  array  of  the  names  of  men  of  science  who  give  their  sanc- 
tion to  some  phase  of  the  theory.  But  let  it  be  borne  in 
mind  that  no  well-established  scientific  principle,  no  de- 
monstrated law,  exhibits  such  contradictory  and  conflicting 


*Natural  Selection,  372  A.,  Am.  Ed. 
4 


60  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

phases  as  those  we  have  just  witnensed.  The  laws  of  grav- 
itation, or  of  chemical  affinity,  for  instance,  offer  no  such 
contradictions  of  their  adherents;  because  they  are  founded 
on  facts,  while  evolution  is  a  mere  notion,  founded  on  ig- 
norance and  error,  as  we  shall  presently  see.  Accordingly, 
by  far  the  greater  number  of  the  greatest  scientists  oppose 
it,  as  utterly  unscientific,  and  have  recorded  their  opposi- 
tion, an  1  the  reasons  for  it.  Sir  John  Herschel  and  Sir 
Wm.  Thompson,  among  astronomers,  have  proclaimed  its 
antagonism  to  the  facts  of  physical  astronomy.  No  new 
facts  subversive  of  the  foundations  of  faith  in  God  as  rec- 
ognized in  the  universe  by  Bacon,  Newton,  Boyle,  Des- 
cartes, Leibnitz,  Pascal,  Paley  and  Bell,  have  been  discov- 
ered by  such  scientists  as  Whewell,  Sedgwick,  Brewster, 
Faraday,  Hugh  Miller,  or  our  American  geologists,  Daw- 
son, Hitchcock,  and  Dana.  Nor  have  the  deliberate  and 
expanded  demonstrations  of  its  unscientific  character  by 
the  late  lamented  Agassiz  been  ever  fairly  met,  much  less 
overturned.  I  refer  to  these  honored  names  for  the  bene- 
fit of  that  large  class  who  must  take  their  science  upon 
faith  in  rome  scientific  prophet  or  apostle,  in  dcfjiult  of  any 
possibility  of  personal  investigation  of  the  facts.  Indeed, 
to  the  great  majority,  even  of  so-called  scientific  men,  their 
science  must  be  founded  upon  faith  in  the  dogma  of  some 
scientific  pope  and  council.  And  to  such  it  may  be  reas- 
suring, amidst  the  evolutionists' cries  of  Science!  Science! 
to  know  that  a  great  many  of  the  greatest  scientists,  in 
spite  of  all  these  confused  assertions,  do  still  bcl'eve  in 
Almighty  God,  do  call  their  soul&>  their  own,  and  hope 
when  they  die  to  go  to  heaven. 

As  a  specimen  of  the  contempt  in  which  this  theory  is 
held  by  the  princes  of  science,  read  the  following  extract 
of  an  address  by  Agassiz,  at  a  recent  meeting  of  the  Acad- 
emy of  Science:* 

*From  the  Presbyterian^  December  7,  1872. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY?  51 

"As  I  grow  older  in  the  ranks  of  science,"  said  the  pro- 
fessor, "I  feel  more  and  more, the  danger  of  stretching  in- 
ferences from  a  few  observations  to  a  wide  field.  I  see  that 
the  younger  generation  among  naturalists  are  at  this  mo- 
ment falling  into  the  mistake  of  making  assertions  and 
presenting  views  as  scientific  principles  which  are  not  even 
based  upon  real  observation.  J  think  it  is  time  that  some 
positive  remonstrance  be  made  against  that  tendency.  The 
manner  in  wh  ch  the  evolution  theory  in  zoology  is  treated 
would  lead  those  who  are  not  special  zoologists  to  suppose 
that  observations  have  been  made  by  which  it  can  be  in- 
ferred that  there  is  in  nature  such  a  thing  as  change  among 
organized  beings  actually  taking  place.  There  is  no  such 
thing  o?i  record.  It  is  shifting  the  ground  from  one  field 
of  observation  to  another  to  make  this  statement,  and  when 
the  assertions  go  so  far  as  to  exclude  from  the  domain  of 
science  those  who  will  not  be  dragged  into  this  mire  of 
mere  assertion,  then  it  is  time  to  protest. 

"  He  thought  it  was  intolerant  to  say  he  was  not  on  scien- 
tific grounds  because  he  was  not  falling  into  the  path  which 
was  occupied  by  those  who  maintain  that  all  organized  be- 
ings have  been  derived  from  a  few  original  progenitors. 
Other  supporters  of  the  transmutation  doctrine  assume 
that  they  can  dcnonstrate  the  changes  to  have  taken  place 
by  showing  certain  degrees  of  resemblance;  but  what  they 
never  touch  is  the  quality  and  condition  of  those  few  first 
progenitors  from  which  they  were  evolved.  They  assume 
that  they  contained  all  that  is  necessary  to  evolve  what  ex- 
ists now.  That  is  begging  the  que  tion  at  the  outset;  for 
if  these  first  prototypes  contained  the  principle  of  evolu- 
tion, we  should  know  something  about  them  from  observa- 
tion, and  it  should  be  shown  that  there  are  such  organized 
beings  as  are  capable  of  evolution. 

"I  ask,  Whence  came  these  properties?  If  this  power 
and  capacity  of  change  is  not  inherent  to  the  first  progen- 


52  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

itors,  then  I  ask,  Whence  came  the  impulses  by  which 
those  progenitors  which  have  not  this  power  of  change  in 
themselves  acquire  them?  What  is  the  power  by  which 
they  are  started  in  directions  which  are  not  determined  by 
their  primitive  nature?  From  the  total  silence  of  the  sup- 
porters of  the  transmutation  theory  on  these  and  other 
points,  he  did  wd  think  it  worth  their  while  to  take  the 
sUghtei^t  n  dice  of  this  doctrine  of  evolution  in  his  scientific 
considerations  He  acknowledged  what  the  evolutionists 
had  done  incidentally  in  scientific  research;  none  had  done 
more  than  Mr.  Darwin.  He  believed  he  had  been  injured 
woefully  by  his  adherents.  He  was  a  far  better  man  than 
most  of  his  school  made  him." 

It  u  to  be  acknowledged,  however,  that  many  scientists 
are  evolutionists  Mr.  Darwin  is  not  alone  in  his  belief. 
If  he  were,  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  spend  time  in 
examining  it.  Quite  a  number  of  scientific  men  have  fallen 
into  it,  ad  lecture  and  write  commendations  of  it;  and  it 
has  become  quite  popular  among  a  certain  class  who  do 
not  like  to  accept  the  Bible  doctrine  that  Grod  created  man^ 
with  its  necessary  consequence  that  the  creature  ought  to 
obey  his  Creator;  and  they  have  proceeded  to  patch  it  out 
into  completeness — for,  as  you  observe,  it  is  a  little  defec. 
tive ;  like  its  own  primeval  squirt,  it  lacks  a  head  and  a 
tail — it  has  neither  a  beginning  nor  an  end  properly  fitted 
to  it.  It  takes  a  piece  out  of  the  middle  of  the  universe 
from  the  management  of  God,  but  it  leaves  the  beginning 
and  the  end  totally  unaccounted  for;  telling  us  neither 
whence  came  the  first  germs,  nor  whither  tends  the  final 
fully  developed  angel.  Mr.  Darwin,  though  he  calls  one 
of  his  works,  the  Origin  of  Species,  really  avoids  the 
question  of  origin  He  admits  the  miracle  of  the  creation 
of  the  four  or  five  original  germs  of  life,  which,  according 
to  tho  evolutionists,  is  as  unscientific  as  if  he  admitted  four 
or  five  hundred.     They  desire  to  escape  the  operation  of 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  53 

God  altogether.  Moreover,  he  gives  no  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  law  of  heredity,  by  which  each  being  pro- 
duces its  like ;  nor  yet  of  the  origin  of  the  power  of  vari- 
ation, according  to  which  profitable  variations  occur.  Here, 
then,  is  still  a  field  in  which  God  reigns.  But  it  is  specially 
with  Mr  Darwin's  admission  of  the  Creator  to  bestow  the 
origin  of  life  that  evolutionists  are  displeased.  If  they 
admit  God  at  the  beginning  of  the  world  they  see  plainly 
that  there  is  no  possibility  of  getting  rid  of  him  afterward. 
Messrs.  Huxley,  Spencer,  Tyadall,  Buchner,  Haeckel  and 
Vogt  combine  their  forces  accordingly  to  evolve  the  world 
as  we  find  it  without  God's  intervention. 

Mr.  Huxley,  perceiving  that  to  make  either  man,  or 
monkey,  or  nomad,  you  must  have  materials,  kindly  brings 
a  little  pitcher  of  protoplasm,  which  he  calls  the  physical 
basis  of  life.  It  is  the  meat  our  Caesar  feeds  on,  and  in- 
deed, for  that  matter,  all  living  things.  All  vegetable  and 
animal  tissues  are  made  up  mostly  of  oxygen,  hydrogen, 
carbon  and  nitrogen ;  and  as  the  materials  of  which  all  liv- 
ing beings  are  built  are  the  same  originally,  and  are  simply 
these  chemical  substances  with  a  little  iron,  salt  and  lime, 
with  their  properties,  he  will  have  it  that  all  life,  includ- 
ing man's  life  and  thought,  is  merely  a  development  of 
protoplasm.  This  is  the  clay  out  of  which  all  the  various 
bricks,  and  tiles,  and  tea  cups,  and  porcelain  vases  of  the 
great  world  building  are  built.  We  don't  need  to  begin 
with  monkeys,  nor  fish,  or  pollywogs,  now  to  develop  into 
men,  for  we  go  down  to  the  very  bottom,  since  we  have  the 
stufi"  they  all  are  made  of,  namely,  protoplasm.  Still  this 
clay  needs  a  potter  to  mold  and  bake  it. 

The  difficulty  about  the  protoplasm  is  that  it  must  be 
alive.  You  can  not  get  a  living  pollywog,  no  more  than  a 
living  elephant,  out  of  dead  protoplasm.  Mr.  Huxley 
shows  very  well  that  all  protoplasm  consists  of  the  same 
materials ;  in  fact,  that  all  flesh  is  grass,  as  the  Scripture 


54  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

says.  The  difficulty  is  how  to  convert  the  grass  into  flesh, 
unless  by  some  animal  eating  it;  or  to  convert  the  nitro- 
gen, carbon  and  water  into  grass  or  grain,  or  any  other 
form  of  protein  or  protoplasm,  without  the  previous  action 
of  some  plant.  In  short,  how  are  we  to  make  the  chemi- 
cal materials  live?  Here  Mr.  Tyndall  comes  in  and  en- 
dows the  matter  of  the  universe  with  life,  and  with  all  the 
potency  of  producing  bodies  and  souls.  In  his  famous 
Belfast  Address  he  says:  "Abandoning  all  disguise,  the 
confession  that  I  feel  bound  to  make  before  you  is  that  I 
prolong  the  vision  backward,  beyond  the  boundary  of  the 
experimental  evidence,  and  discern  in  this  matter,  which 
we  in  our  ignorance,  and  notwithstanding  our  professed 
reverence  for  its  Creator,  have  hitherto  covered  with  oppro- 
brium, the  promise  and  potency  of  every  form  and  quality 
of  life." 

Yet,  after  all  this  marvelous  endowment  of  matter  with 
all  potency,  we  have  not  got  quite  back  to  the  beginning. 
For  still  the  questions  arise,  Where  did  this  almighty  mat- 
ter come  from?  Who  endowed  it  with  these  wonderful 
potencies?  And  how  does  it  happen  to  work  so  well,  in  such 
orderly  and  regular  evolution  of  star  dust,  suns,  planets, 
pollywogs,  monkeys,  men  and  maggots,  in  eternal  cycles, 
ever  advancing  higher  and  doing  better  and  better  for  the 
race,  though  poorly  enough,  it  appears,  for  the  miserable 
individuals?  Here  Buchner,  Vogt,  Spencer  and  other  ma- 
terialists come  in  and  perfect  that  which  was  lacking;  show- 
ing how  the  star  dust  made  itself,  and  how  the  paving  stones 
made  themselves,  and  are  under  no  obligations  to  any  Crea- 
tor but  themselves.  Matter  and  force  are  all  they  need,  and 
endless  time  in  which  to  work,  and  they  will  account  for  the 
universe  without  any  Creator  at  all.  Everything  and  every 
person  must  be  just  as  it  is,  according  to  the  regular  oper- 
ation of  the  laws  of  Nature. 

As  Buchner,  Vogt  and  Spencer  have  given  the  system  a 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  55 

head,  Lubbock,  Evans  and  others  have  supplied  it  with  a 
tail,  and  demonstrated  how  society,  and  morals,  and  relig- 
ion have  been  excogitated  by  the  apes  out  of  tho'r  medi- 
tations in  the  forests.  It  is  a  fearful  and  wonderful  account 
they  give  us  of  the  origin  of  marriage  from  the  battles  of 
the  baboons,  of  the  rights  of  property  established  by  ter- 
rible fights  for  groves  of  good  chestnuts,  of  the  begin- 
nings of  morals  from  the  instincts  of  brutes,  and  of  the 
dawnings  of  religion,  or  rather  of  superstition,  from  the 
dreams  of  these  animals ;  tho  result  of  the  whole  being 
that  civilization,  and  society,  and  law,  and  order,  and  relig- 
ion, are  all  simply  the  evolution  of  the  instincts  of  the 
brutes,  and  that  there  is  no  necessity  for  invoking  any 
supernatural  interference  to  produce  them.  The  termina- 
tion of  the  whole,  as  far  as  you  and  1  are  concerned,  is 
that  "We  shall  fade  away  as  the  faint  cloud  melts  into  the 
blue  ether,"  into  the  eternal  sleep  of  death. 

It  thus  appears  that  there  is  an  orderly  succession  and 
attempted  adjustment  of  one  part  of  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution to  another,  and  that  all  the  various  workers  are  co- 
operating toward  one  grand  result.  It  is  true  they  diflfcr 
widely  in  their  professed  religious  creeds  and  political  par- 
tialities. Mr.  Darwin  avows  his  belief  in  a  Creator.  Mr. 
Huxley  votes  on  the  London  School  Board  for  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Bible  into  the  public  schools.  Mr.  Spencer 
is  willing  to  allow  the  existence  of  some  great  unknowable 
mystery.  Some  of  the  French  and  German  evolutionists 
dispense  with  any  reference  to  God,  as  an  unnecessary 
hypothesis.  Others  oppose  the  idea  of  God  altogether,  as 
inimical  to  progress.  M  Comte  proposed  a  worship  of 
humanity.  M.  Strauss  would  worship  the  universe.  But 
with  all  this  variety  of  uniform,  and  armor,  and  tactics, 
the  evolutionists  are  all  soldiers  of  the  same  army,  and  are 
all  fighting  the  same  great  battle,  for  the  brutal  origin  of 
man,  and  his  independence  of  God.    From  which  independ- 


66  WAS  TOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

ence  of  God,  and  brutal  origin  of  mankind,  result  very 
important  consequences.  For  the  belief  of  this  notion 
necessarily  destroys  all  faith  in  the  Bible,  and  in  the  Chris- 
tianity which  it  reveals,  and  revolutionizes  the  basis  of  the 
civilization  founded  upon  it,  and  all  the  laws  protecting  life, 
property,  marriage  and  religion;  which  laws  are  based  upon 
the  belief  of  mankind  in  the  dignity  of  man,  the  sacred- 
ness  of  human  life,  and  the  sanction  of  morality  by  the 
All-seeing  Judge  of  all  the  earth,  who  will  reward  every 
man  according  to  his  works.  For  all  practical  purposes  it 
makes  no  great  difference  whether  a  man  denies  that  there 
is  any  God  at  all,  or  admits  that  there  is  some  kind  of  a 
god  who  created  tto  world  millions  of  years  ago,  and  just 
set  it  a  spinning  to  work  out  its  destiny  as  best  it  might, 
but  never  after  concerned  himself  about  it,  or  its  people, 
and  never  will ;  for  nobody  will  ever  trouble  his  head  about 
a  god  who  never  troubles  his  head  about  him. 

iMost  of  the  evolutionists  are  zealous  advocates  of  their 
system.  These  propagandists  have  had  such  a  degree  of 
success  in  attracting  public  attention,  in  inspiring  a  large 
proportion  of  the  secular  press,  besides  scientific  jo'irnals, 
as  advocates  of  their  notions,  and  in  obtaining  entrance  for 
them  into  the  common  school  books,  put  into  the  hupds  of 
our  children,  and  into  massive  quartos  published  by  State 
legislatures  with  the  money  of  Christian  people,  and  in  the 
prevalent  corruption  of  public  morals  and  breach  of  private 
trusts  necessarily  resulting  from  the  evolution  of  thes-^ 
principles,  that  we  are  compelled,  in  self-defense,  to  exam- 
ine the  doctrine  of  evolution.  It  is  all  very  well  for  Mr. 
Tyndall  to  warn  off  everybody,  but  evolutionists,  from  any 
investigations  into  cosmogony;  about  whi^h  he  owns  that 
they  know  very  little  now,  and  will  not  know  much  for 
some  millions  of  years  to  come.  But  common  people,  who 
will  not  live  so  long,  but  who  in  the  meantime  have  to  live 
and  make  money,  and  save  it,  who  have  children  to  rear, 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  .  57 

and  houses  which  they  do  not  want  burned  over  their  heads, 
who  have  taxes  to  pay,  increasing  every  year,  and  public 
plunderers  to  prosecute  and  who:  e  b  Hots  may  be  asked 
one  of  these  days  for  the  substitution  of  the  communes  of 
the  original  apes,  and  the  lied  Republic  for  these  United 
States,  all  upon  the  alleged  scientific  proof  for  the  truth  of 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  and  the  consequent  abolishment 
of  Christianity — common  people,  I  maintain,  by  whose 
money  and  votes  this  dogma  is  to  be  established,  will  not 
be  debarred  from  asking  the  why  and  the  wherefore,  neither 
by  Mr.  Tyndall,  nor  by  any  other  scientific  pope.  It  is  a 
little  too  late  in  the  day  for  men  who  do  not  know  their 
own  mind  from  the  Alps  to  Belfast,  and  who  doubt  whether 
God  made  them  whenever  they  are  dyspeptic,  -to  stand  up 
before  the  public  demanding  that  wc  shut  our  eyes  and 
open  our  mouths,  and  swallow  every  preposterouH  notion 
they  think  proper  to  proclaim  as  science,  to  the  destruc- 
tion of  our  faith  in  the  God  who  made  us,  of  our  respect 
for  our  brethren  of  mankind,  and  of  our  hope  of  heaven. 

//.      The  Illogical  Structure  of  the  Theory. 

When  men  come  before  the  world  with  a  dogma  freighted 
with  such  wide-reaching  revolutions,  they  ought  to  be  pre- 
pared to  furnish  the  most  irrefragable  proofs  of  its  truth, 
and  of  its  obligation  and  authority.  "We  should  be  able  to 
establish  it  beyond  all  controversy  as  based  on  a  series 
of  facts  which  take  their  place  historically  in  the  line  of 
the  inductive  sciences;  about  which  all  men  of  science 
are  agreed,  as  all  astronomers,  for  instance,  are  agreed 
about  gravitation ;  and  we  should  be  able  to  show  that 
each  of  the  alleged  consequences  flows  inevitably  and 
logically  from  these  established  facts.  Ignorance,  hy- 
pothesis, assumption  of  facts,  sophism^  begging  the  ques- 
tion, and  the  like,  are  wholly  impertinent  in  any  such 
discussion.      Were    they  even   tolerable    in   the    field    of 


58  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY? 

metaphysical  discussion,  they  must,  by  the  rules  of  the 
Positive  Philosophy  itself,  banishing  all  but  ascertained 
facts  from  the  halls  of  science,  be  excluded  from  this 
discussion  of  an  alleged  general  law  of  nature.  But 
when  we  enter  on  the  examination  of  the  dogma  oi 
evolution,  we  find  its  parentage  among  ignoble  supersti- 
tions ;  its  fundamental  facts  still  lie  in  the  darkness  of  ig 
norance  and  assumption;  and  its  reasoning  is  illogical  an«: 
absurd. 

The  most  prominent  feature  which  arrests  our  notic; 
as  we  look  closely  at  the  theory  of  evolution,  as  presented 
by  any  of  its  prominent  atheistical  advocates  is,  its  illogi- 
cal and  incoherent  structure.  The  writer  contradicts  him- 
self. The  various  parts  of  the  theory  do  not  hang  to- 
gether. The  alleged  facts  do  not  sustain  the  conclusions 
deduced  from  them.  Mr.  Darwin's  books  especially 
abound  in  the  most  intolerable  assumptions  of  principles 
and  facts,  not  only  without  proof,  but  in  the  face  of  unan- 
swered and  unanswerable  objections.  And  the  theory  is 
useless  for  the  purpose  of  its  proposal.  All  this  is  utterly 
at  variance  with  the  method  of  true  science.  None  but  a 
mind  debauched  by  bigoted  attachment  to  a  preconceived 
theory  could  overlook  these  fatal  defects  in  the  system. 
Indeed  both  Darwin  and  Huxley  admit  that  acceptance  of 
the  evidence  must  be  preceded  by  belief  in  the  principle 
of  evolution.  It  is  marvelous  that  any  properly  educated 
student  of  mental  science  should  accept  a  theory  so  inco- 
herent, in  which  the  rents  are  scarcely  held  together  by 
the  patches.  We  can  only  exhibit  a  few  specimens  of  the 
multitude  of    these  fatal  inconsistencies  and  deficiencies. 

The  theory  is  useless  as  an  explanation  of  the  arcana  of 
Nature.  Mr.  Darwin  is,  by  his  own  acknowledgment,  a 
very  ignorant  man — ignorant  of  the  very  things  necessary 
for  him  to  know  before  ho  can  construct  a  method  of  crea- 
tion, and  unable  to  explain  to  us  what  he  sets  out  to  ex- 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  59 

plain.  He  confesses  himself  ignorant  of  the  origin  and 
laws  of  inheritance,  by  which  his  whole  system  hangs  to- 
gether ;  of  the  common  ancestors  from  which  he  alleges  all 
creatures  are  derived  ;  of  the  laws  of  correlation  of  parts, 
though  these  are  indispensable  to  development ;  of  the 
reasons  of  the  extinction  of  species,  which  is  the  great  bus- 
iness, the  very  trade  of  his  great  agent.  Natural  Selection. 
He  has  no  knowledge  of  the  duration  of  past  ages,  though 
that  duration  is  an  essential  element  of  his  calculations.  The 
spontaneous  variations  of  plants  and  animals  are  the  very 
mainspring  of  his  machine;  but  he  tells  us  he  knows 
nothing  of  the  laws  governing  them ;  nor  has  he  any  in- 
formation about  the  creation  of  the  primordial  forms,  nor 
about  the  date  of  beginning,  or  rate  of  progress.*  All 
which  are  necessary  to  be  known  in  order  to  the  formation 
of  a  correct  theory.  Again  and  again,  when  confronted 
with  facts  which  his  theory  can  not  explain,  he  takes 
refuge  in  confessions  of  ignorance.  When  he  meets  facts 
which  flatly  contradict  his  theory  of  the  imperceptible 
beneficial  acquirement  of  organs,  or  of  properties  by  in- 
heritance— such  as  the  sterility  of  hybrids,  the  instincts  of 
neuter  bees,  the  battery  of  the  electric  eel,  the  human  eye, 
and  the  eye  of  the  cuttle-fish,  he  owns  that  "  it  is  impossi- 
hle  to  conceive  by  what  steps  these  wondrous  organs  have 
been  produced."  When  asked  for  the  missing  links  be- 
tween existing  species,  he  refers  us  to  the  undiscovered 
fossiliferous  strata  below  the  Silurian.  So  Sir  C.  Lyell  re- 
fers us  for  a  view  of  the  apes,  which  developed  the  first 
men,  to  the  unexplored  geological  regions  of  Central 
Africa !  And  Kev.  Baden  Powell  refers  us,  for  the  miss- 
ing links  of  the  chain  of  development,  to  "  that  enormous 
period  of  which  we  are,    from  the  conditions,  precluded 


-Origin  of  Species,  4,  10,  127,  9,  97,  100,  409,  410,  415,  423.  • 
Descent  of  Man,  192,  204,  and  II.— 15,  257. 


60  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY? 

from  hnoioing  any  tiling  whatever."  And  as  to  the  Origin 
of  Species,  the  very  thing  the  title  of  his  book  proclaims, 
and  how  the  original  germs  varied  into  the  four  or  five 
primeval  forms,  and  these  into  the  next,  he  says  :  "  Our  i^- 
Tiorance  of  the  laws  of  variation  is  pr-ofoimd  /  "  And  that 
is  science  ! 

The  Christian  acknowledges  his  ignorance  of  the  method 
of  creation  ;  but  he  presents  a  sufficient  cause  f  r  the  ex- 
istence of  the  facts.  The  evolutionist  ridicules  the  Bible 
account  of  creation  as  incomprehensible,  aod  then  he  gives 
us  an  account  which  he  himself  owns  to  be  incomprehensi- 
ble, and  which  we,  besides,  perceive  to  be  absurd.  He 
proposes  to  explain  to  us  the  origin  of  species,  and  locates 
it  in  the  geological  strata  of  an  unexplored  continent,  and 
in  those  remote  ages  of  which  by  the  conditions  we  are 
precluded  from  hnoming  any  thing  v:hatever  !  Objecting 
to  the  idea  of  the  God  of  the  Bible,  as  a  self-existent,  in- 
finite, intelligent,  omnipotent,  good  Spirit,  because  of  its 
unthinkability,  Messrs.  Spencer,  Tyndall,  and  the  rest  as- 
sure us  of  the  eternal  self  existence  of  an  intelligent  cloud 
of  gas,  endowed  with  all  promises  and  potencies,  of  life  and 
thought,  as  a  simple  and  intelligible  substitute  !  Belief  in 
God  Almighty  is  only  superstition,  but  faith  in  Mr.  Tyn- 
dall's  gas-god  is  science.  Mr.  Spencer  honestly  lands  in 
the  unknowable.  Well,  then,  what  science  have  we  gained 
of  the  mysteries  of  our  origin  ? 

Of  the  self-contradictions  of  evolutionists,  we  have  an 
instance  in  Huxley's  treatment  of  the  fundamental  fact  of 
his  system — protoplasm.  The  grand  question  is  :  How 
does  the  protoplasm  become  alive?  In  his  famous  lecture 
on  the  subject.  Physical  Basis  of  Life,  he  argues  through- 
out, that  life  is  a  property  of  protoplasm  ;  that  protoplasm 
owes  its  properties  to  the  nature  and  arrangement  of  its 
molecules  ;  that  there  is  no  more  need  to  infer  or  allege  a 
faculty  called  vitality,  to  account  for  the   production   of 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  61 

these  various  properties  of  the  protophism  from  its  chem- 
ical constituents,  than  to  infer  a  power  called  aquosity,  to 
account  for  the  generation  of  water  from  oxj^gen  and  hy- 
drogen ;  and  that  our  thoughts  are  the  expression  of  mole- 
cular changes  in  that  matter  of  life  which  is  the  source  of 
our  other  vital  phenomena.  Briefly,  our  minds  are  manu- 
factured by  our  bodies.  But  in  his  more  recent  work,  the 
Classification  of  Animals,  1860,  without  any  retraction  of 
his  previous  error,  or  acknowledgment  that  he  has  changed 
his  mind,  he  flally  contradicts  his  Physical  Basis,  accept- 
ing and  indorsing  "  the  well-founded  doctrine  that  life  is 
the  cause  and  not  the  consequence  of  organization." 

A  still  more  ridiculous  incoherency  of  the  same  sort  is 
displayed  in  the  logical  department  of  Huxley's  Physical 
Basis  of  Life  ;  where,  after  trying  to  persuade  us  to  put 
our  feet  on  the  ladder  which  leads  in  the  reverse  direction 
from  Jiicob's,  and  to  descend  with  him  into  the  slough  of 
materialism,  and  affirming  that  "  our  thoughts  are  the  ex- 
pression of  molecular  changes  in  that  matter  of  life  which 
is  the  source  of  our  other  vital  phenomena  ;  "  he  goes  on 
to  say,  that  he  does  not  believe  in  materialism.  And  he 
tries  to  vindicate  himself  by  asserting  that  "we  know 
nothing  about  the  composition  of  any  body  whatever  as  it 
is."  And  this  after  deducing  our  thoughts  from  the  mole- 
cular changes  of  the  protoplasm  !  A  pretty  story  truly, 
and  an  impudent  one  !  Here  is  a  man  who  will  tell  you 
all  about  how  your  body  made  your  soul  out  of  proto- 
plasm, and  in  the  next  page  acknowledges  that  he  knows 
nothing  about  the  composition  of  either  the  body  or  soul 
as  it  is  1  And  yet  this  man  will  mock  the  believers  in  the 
Bible  as  "smothering  their  minds  under  a  respectable 
feather  bed  of  tradition."  because  they  hesitate  to  shut 
their  eyes,  and  swallow  his  contradictions. 

Mr.  Wallace  gives  us  a  specimen  of  this  logical  incoher- 
ence affecting  if  possible  still  more  deeply  the  foundations 


62  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

of  philosophic  faith.*  He  heads  his  paragraph  Matter  is 
Force,  and  goes  on  to  argue  that  matter  is  essentially  force, 
and  nothing  but  force;  that  matter,  as  popularly  understood, 
does  not  exist.  Then  in  a  couple  of  pages  he  goes  on  to 
argue  "that  the  whole  universe  is  not  merely  dependent  on,  j 
but  actually  is,  the  will  of  higher  intelligences,  or  of  one 
Supreme  Intelligence  "  But  the  whole  tenor  of  his  book' 
is  thus  demolished  ;  since  evolution,  if  it  means  anything, 
means  the  interposition  of  natural  law  between  the  will  of 
the  one  Supreme  Intelligence  and  the  universe.  And  on  this 
theory  Mr.  Wallace's  criticisms  on  Mr.  Darwin  and  others 
arc  impious,  being  criticisms  upon  parts  of  the  will  of  the 
one  Supreme  Intelligence. 

Similar  instances  of  self-contradiction  could  be  given, 
did  space  permit,  from  almost  every  advocate  of  evolu- 
tion. 

Our  space  permits  the  exhibition  of  but  a  single  instatiQC 
of  the  inherent  incoherency  of  the  theory.  There  is 
nothing  in  which  all  the  atheistic  evolutionists  are  more 
emphatic  than  in  the  exclusion  of  design  from  the  uni- 
verse. All  their  arguments  and  sneers  are  leveled  against 
the  idea,  that  the  adaptations  of  Nature  were  designed  or 
intended  by  an  intelligent  mind  ;  and  the  theory  of  ev- 
olution is  welcomed  chiefly  because  it  enables  them  to  give 
some  account  of  the  order  of  the  world,  without  any  ac- 
knowledgment of  a  providence  guiding  it  to  some  end  or 
purpose.  But  yet  all  these  same  evolutionists  proclaim 
progress  as  the  great  law  of  Nature,  and  expend  themselves 
with  wonderful  eloquence  in  tracing  the  progress  of  neb- 
ulae into  worlds,  and  of  worms  into  men.  They  glory  in 
progress  of  the  past,  and  prophesy  progress  in  the  future, 
apparently  in  the  most  childish  unconsciousness,  that  the 
very  idea  of  progress  involves  design,  and  that  the  fact  of 

♦Natural  Selection,  p.  365.    Am.  Ed. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  SIONKEY?  63 

progress  asserts  providence.  Nor  is  there  any  escape  by 
alleging  necessity  of  Nature,  which  is  merely  endowing  the 
designer  of  progress  with  omnipotence  as  well  as  omnis- 
cience. 

The  illogical  character  of  the  theory  is  still  further 
manifested  by  the  failure  of  its  alleged  facts  to  sustain  the 
consequences  deduced  from  them.  Suppose  all  the  facts 
alleged  by  the  atheistic  evolutionists  were  granted,  how 
would  they  do  away  with  the  evidence  of  the  being  and 
government  of  God  ?  as  they  loudly  allege  they  do.  Let 
it  be  granted  that  all  men  grew  up  from  monkeys,  and  the 
monkeys  from  worms,  and  all  worms  grew  from  invisible 
animalculse,  and  that  the  animalculas  flashed  into  life  by 
the  chemical  contact  of  the  materials  of  the  protoplasm, 
and  that  the  protoplasm  was  a  natural  crop  of  the  cooling 
globe,  and  that  the  cooling  globe  condensed  itself  out  of 
fire  mist  or  nebulae  or  star  dust,  I  demand  to  know  how 
does  all  that  enable  me  to  get  rid  of  the  law  of  causation  ? 
It  is  a  necessary  law  of  my  nature  to  believe  that  every 
effect  demands  an  adequate  cause.  It  is  equally  a  law  of 
my  nature  to  believe  that  every  compound,  or  composite 
substance,  is  an  effect,  that  the  compound  did  not  com- 
pound itself. 

Here  is  a  great  effect — a  universe  in  solution,  with  all 
the  chemical  constituents  of  our  globe  and  solar  system 
floating  in  it,  and  all  their  laws  of  chemical  afiinity  and 
proportion,  and  all  their  electrical  attractions  and  repul- 
sions, in  full  operation  (else  we  would  never  get  a  universe 
to  thicken  down  out  of  it)  ;  and  besides,  all  the  potencies 
of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  and  all  the  great  powers  of 
the  human  mind,  in  a  rather  vaporous  condition,  it  is  true, 
but  still  all  there— Socrates,  Seneca  and  Solomon,  Moses, 
Solon  and  Blackstone  Homer,  Milton  and  Shakespeare, 
Demosthenes,  Cicero  and  Daniel  Webster,  Watt,  Stephen- 
son, Fulton  and  Morse,  popes,  puritans  and  evolutionists, 


64  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY? 

universities  and  newspapers  and  congrcs?e3,  the  United 
States  and  the  British  Empire,  and  the  rest  of  mankind — 
all  boiled  up  into  Mr.  Tyndall's  potencies,  but  all  there  in 
potency,  just  as  truly  as  they  ever  were  here  in  fact. 
Well  !  here  is  a  great  effect  just  as  imperatively  demand- 
ing a  great  First  Cause  as  the  world  afterward  formed  out 
of  it.  These  substances  did  not  make  themselves  then, 
any  more  than  the  resulting  persons  or  paving  stones  make 
themselves  now,  and  they  did  not  endow  themselves  with 
these  potencies,  nor  calculate  and  establish  these  laws  of 
chemical  combination  in  exact  proportion,  nor  determine 
scientifically  the  laws  of  gravitation  and  electricity  and 
light  and  heat,  before  they  came  into  being;  which  must 
have  all  been  established  before  a  single  particle  of  the 
Btar  dust  could  begin  to  cool,  or  to  approach  another.  The 
very  first  idea  of  matter  or  of  force  we  can  form  demands 
law,  and  law  is  merely  another  name  for  the  divine  order 
of  Nature.  Whatever  foundation  for  Natural  Religion, 
for  faith  in  God  as  the  Creator  and  Governor  of  the  world, 
is  afforded  by  the  existing  order  of  the  world,  it  is  in  no 
degree  logically  weakened  (though  it  may  be  pracfcally) 
by  viewing  that  order  as  reached  by  a  process  of  evolution, 
since  th  it  process  also  must  have  been  designed,  planned, 
adapted  to  its  purpose,  and  divinely  superintended. 

Accordingly,  we  find  that  many  philosophers,  and  some 
divines,  acknowledge  a  process  of  the  evolution  of  God's 
great  idea,  and  adore  him  for  the  growth  alike  of  forests 
and  firmaments,  regarding  evolution,  thus  conditioned,  as 
profoundly  religious  St.  Augustine,  and  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  of  old,  and  many  modern  speculators,  have  as- 
sented to  the  theory  of  evolution  as  perfectly  consistent 
with  belief  in  God,  as  its  Author.  It  is  utterly  illogical  to 
allege  that  evolution  has  banished  final  causes.  Grant  it 
all  its  facts,  and  these  facts  proclaim  God. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  evolutionists  are  not  confi- 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  65 

dent  of  the  ability  of  the  facts  which  they  are  able  to 
allege  to  sustain  their  theory,  since  they  are  perpetually 
postulating  assumptions  necessary  to  their  argument,  but 
which  are  utterly  unproved,  and  incapable  of  proof.  Mr. 
Darwin  is  the  most  notorious  oiFender  against  inductive 
science  in  this  respect.  I  have  now  before  me  a  list  of 
eighty-six  assumptions  of  this  sort  in  the  Origin  of  Species 
alone.  Those  in  his  other  works  are  too  numerous  to 
mention.  He  continually  mistakes  his  own  assertions,  or 
even  his  own  mere  conjectures,  for  proof,  and  refers  back 
to  them,  and  builds  further  assumptions  upon  them  accord- 
ingly ;  and  he  assumes  facts  unproven  and  incapable  of 
proof;  and  principles  which  he  must  know  are  denied  by 
his  opponents.  We  can  only  take  a  few  instances  at 
random. 

He  assumes  that  all  dogs  are  developed  from  wolves 
(Descent  of  Man,  page  48);  that  the  instincts  of 
animals  are  developed  (page  38) ;  that  language  was  de- 
veloped (page  53);  that  there  is  a  wider  interval  between 
the  lamprey  and  the  ape  than  between  the  ape  and  the 
man,  thus  begging  the  question  of  man's  brutality  (page 
3-1);  that  the  savage  is  the  original  state  of  man  (page 
63) ;  that  parental  instincts  are  the  result  of  Natural  Se- 
lection, after  owning  utter  ignorance  of  their  origin  (page 
77) ;  that  the  ideas  of  glory  and  infamy  are  the  workings 
of  sympathy  (page  82);  the  heredity  of  moral  tastes 
(page  98) ;  that  the  standard  of  morality  has  been  rising 
since  the  giving  of  the  ten  commandments  (page  99) ;  that 
our  ancestors  were  quadrupeds  (page  116);  that  there 
have  been  thousands  of  generations  (page  125) ;  that 
breeds  have  the  character  of  species  (Origin  of  Species, 
page  411);  that  rudimentary  organs  are  inherited  abor- 
tions (page  424) ;  that  there  are  four  or  five  original  pro- 
genitors, and  distant  evidence  of  only  one  (page  425); 
he  assumes  descent  to  prove  his  geology  (page  428) ;  and 
5 


66  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

perpetual  progress  toward  perfection  (pages  59,  140,  176, 
428),  in  the  face  of  his  own  facts  of  retrogression. 

Then  look  at  the  outrageous  character  of  the  assumption 
that  beneficial  variations  may  be  added  up  indefinitely, 
that  is,  to  infinity.  Because  a  gymnast  can  leap  over  two 
horses,  can  his  son  leap  over  three?  and  his  son  over  four? 
and  his  son  over  five  ?  and  can  we  in  time  breed  a  man 
who  will  leap  to  the  moon?  And  yet  the  whole  theory  is 
based  upon  forgetfulness  of  the  maxim,  that  there  is  a 
limit  to  all  things,  and  of  the  fact,  that  in  creatures  of 
flesh  and  blood  this  limit  is  very  soon  reached. 

Look  again  at  the  utterly  erroneous  assumption  that 
the  tendency  of  the  struggle  for  life  is  to  improve  the 
combatants ;  an  assumption  contradicted  by  the  whole  his- 
tory of  famine,  war,  pauperism,  and  disease,  among  brutes 
and  men.  Were  the  survivors  of  the  Irish  famine  of 
1847,  or  those  of  the  Persian,  or  Bengali  famines  improved 
by  their  struggle  for  life  ?  It  is  true  the  fittest  survived ; 
but  that  was  all ;  they  were  miserably  emaciated  and  de- 
moralized. Were  the  peasantry  of  Europe  improved  by 
the  wars  of  the  French  Revolution?  On  the  contrary, 
though  the  fittest  survived,  France  was  obliged  to  lower 
the  recruiting  standard  three  inches.  In  all  cases  the  strug- 
gle for  life  injures  all  concerned. 

And  yet  upon  these  two  fundamental  assumptions  the 
theory  is  built ;  of  which  that  of  the  indefinite  accumula- 
tion of  small  profitable  variations  is  outrageously  impossi- 
ble and  absurd ;  and  the  other,  of  the  improvement  of 
breeds  by  starvation  and  hardships,  is  contrary  to  all  ob- 
servation and  experience  !  Take  away  these  two  assump- 
tions, and  the  whole  theory  of  the  gradual  improvement  of 
plants  and  animals  by  such  agency  vanishes  There  is  no 
such  power  of  indefinite  improvement  by  Natural  Selec- 
tion, as  Mr.  Darwin  asserts.  The  utmost  it  can  do  is  to 
keep  breeds  up  to  the  natural  standard,  or  near  to  it,  by 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  67 

destroying  the  weakest ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  weakens 
the  strongest  also.  Were  there  no  other  objection,  this 
one  would  be  fatal,  that  Mr.  Darwin  assigns  an  elevating 
power  to  a  depressing  agency,  and  asserts  ^var,  famine, 
hardship,  and  disease  as  his  holy  angels  perfecting  prog- 
ress. 

Mr.  Darwin  presents  the  most  preposterous  assumptions 
with  such  coolness  and  apparent  unconsciousness  of  their 
utter  improbability  to  his  readers,  and  with  such  an  entire 
ignoring  of  the  necessity  of  any  further  attestation  than 
his  own  ipse  dixit,  as  to  warrant  serious  suspicions  of  his 
sanity.  Take,  for  instance,  his  bear  and  whale  story. 
Hearne  reports  having  seen  in  the  Arctic  regions  a  bear 
swimming  in  the  water  for  hours,  with  his  mouth  wide  open, 
catching  flies  ;  and  Mr.  Darwin  says  if  the  supply  of  flies 
were  constant  (where  the  winter  lasts  eight  months  of  the 
year  40°  below  zero)  he  can  see  no  difficulty  in  the  produc- 
tion at  length  of  an  animal  as  monstrous  as  a  whale!  M. 
Comte's  disciples  never  suspected  their  master's  sanity  till 
he  invented  a  religion  for  them. 

2.  This  theory,  it  should  be  remembered,  is  mereh/  a  the- 
ory, a  mere  notion,  a  hypothesis.  It  is  not  even  alleged  that 
it  is  based  upon  facts  actually  discovered.  The  alleged 
facts  of  the  cooling  of  the  nebulae,  the  chemical  origin  of 
life  upon  our  globe,  and  the  development  of  the  original 
Ascidian  into  the  fish,  and  that  into  the  monkey,  and  of 
the  monkey  into  the  man,  never  were  witnessed  by  any- 
body nor  could  they  be  witnessed.  La  Place  was  honest 
enough  to  call  his  part  of  the  theory,  The  Nebular  Hypo- 
thesis. He  had  no  idea  of  claiming  for  it  the  rank  of  a 
fact  of  science  upon  which  he,  or  anybody  else,  might 
build  a  system.  Nor  are  the  modern  assertors  of  evolution 
able  to  establish  a  sincrlc  instance  of  the  chemical  origrin 
of  life  at  the  present  day;  though  thousands  of  experi- 
ments have  been  made  attempting  that  exploit,  by  English, 


68  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

French,  and  German  chemists  during  the  last  forty  years. 
Nor  has  a  single  case  of  the  transmutation  of  species  ever 
been  observed  in  wild  animals  or  plants;  nor  has  any 
change  of  species  been  produced  in  tame  ones  by  domesti- 
cation or  culture.  No  naturalist  has  seen  a  community  of 
apes  in  the  process  of  improvement  toward  manhood ;  nor 
has  any  philologist  described  the  first  attempts  of  the  mon- 
keys toward  the  articulation  of  language,  or  the  manufac- 
ture of  clothing,  unless  we  except  Mr.  Lemuel  Gulliver's 
interesting  account  of  the  Yahoos.  It  must  be  acknowl- 
edged that  the  animals  described  by  that  accurate  observer, 
and  graphic  describer,  approach  more  nearly  to  those  re- 
quired by  Mr.  Darwin's  theory  than  any  ever  seen  before, 
or  since.  Hence  it  is  greatly  to  be  desired  that  some  scien- 
tific evolutionists  should  thoroughly  explore  those  regions, 
investigate  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Yahoos  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  true  Darwinian,  and  minutely  describe 
those  interesting  features  which  would  enable  us  to  decide 
whether  they  are  monkeys  progressing  to  manhood,  or  men 
brutalizing  into  apehood;  but  which  Mr  Gulliver's  lack  of 
scientific  enthusiasm  for  evolution  prevented  him  from 
closely  examining.  But  until  the  scientific  standing  ot 
Mr.  Gulliver's  Yahoos  is  determined,  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion must  be  assigned  to  the  mountains  of  speculations,  big 
with  expectation,  but  which  yet  await  the  birth  of  their 
first  fact. 

Mr.  Darwin  indeed  alleges  the  results  of  domestication 
upon  animals  and  plants,  as  producing  permanent  varieties 
as  different  in  appearance  as  many  which  are  ranked  by 
naturalists  as  diff'erent  species,  and  he  alleges  that  Natural 
Selection  carries  on  a  similar  process  of  improvement 
among  wild  animals  and  plants. 

But  the  facts  of  domestication  are  most  emphatic  in  re- 
fusing to  acknowledge  any  change  of  species  of  the  most 
carefully  bred  animals.     The  efforts  of  breeders  have  been 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  69 

exerted  for  thousands  of  years  upon  the  dog,  the  ox,  the 
goat,  the  sheep,  and  the  ass,  the  horse,  and  the  camel, 
among  animals;  and  upon  the  goose,  the  duck,  and  the 
pigeon,  and  for  a  shorter  time,  but  still  for  two  thousand 
years,  upon  the  comir.on  barn-door  poultry.  Farmers  in 
all  lands,  since  the  deluge,  have  used  their  best  exertions 
to  improve  the  cereals,  the  fruit  trees,  the  vines,  and  root 
crops,  and  vegetables,  and  the  result  has  been  some  valu- 
able modifications  of  size,  shape,  flavor,  and  fertility ;  but 
in  no  case  whatever  has  any  change  of  species  been  ef- 
fected. All  the  eflforts  of  breeders  have  not  succeeded  in 
making  the  horse  specifically  different  from  the  noble  ani- 
mal described  in  the  Book  of  Job  four  thousand  years 
ago.  The  sheep  has  not  become  a  goat,  nor  the  goat  a 
sheep,  by  all  the  pains  of  all  the  shepherds  since  the  days 
of  Abel.  The  ass  displays  not  the  least  tendency  to  be- 
come a  horse,  nor  the  goat  to  become  a  cow.  Mr.  Darwin 
makes  great  capital  out  of  pigeons,  enumerating  all  the 
varieties  owned  by  fanciers,  and  showing  how  the  Indian 
emperors  bred  them  a  thousand  years  before  Christ.  But 
it  is  strange  that  he  does  not  see  that  this  makes  against 
his  theory ;  since  in  all  that  time  this  most  variable  of 
birds  has  never  been  transmuted  into  any  other  species. 
The  pigeon  has  never  been  changed  into  a  crow,  or  a  mag- 
pie, or  a  woodpecker,  or  a  chicken ;  has  never,  in  fact,  be- 
come anything  else  than  a  pigeon.  Dogs  are  also  some- 
what variable  in  their  varieties,  and  Mr.  Darwin  relies 
greatly  upon  supposed  variations  from  some  one  assumed 
ancestral  pair  of  dogs,  into  the  greyhound,  mastiff,  ter- 
rier, and  lapdog.  But  granting  all  these  unproven  varia- 
tions, no  instance  is  alleged  of  a  dog  ever  becoming  a  cat 
or  a  lion  by  any  care  or  culture. 

It  will  not  do  to  allege,  that,  for  anything  we  know  .to 
the  contrary,  our  present  breeds  of  domestic  animals  and 


70  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

plants  may  be  so  diflferent  from  those  called  by  the  same 
names  in  ancient  times  as  to  be  really  different  species. 

"We  do  know  many  things  to  the  contrary.  In  the 
tombs  of  the  Egyptians,  and  the  sculptures  of  the  Assyrians, 
we  have  pictures  of  the  various  plants,  birds,  and  animals, 
from  three  to  four  thousand  years  old,  as  well  as  of  man, 
the  most  domestic  animal  of  the  whole.  These  paintings 
and  sculptures  assure  us  that  in  all  those  millenniums  do- 
mestication has  not  produced  the  slightest  change  in  the 
races  of  animals,  plants,  or  men.  The  Ethiopian  has  not 
changed  his  skin,  nor  the  leopard  his  spots.  The  negro 
was  then  the  same  black-skinned,  woolly-headed,  flat- 
nosed,  thick  lipped,  long-heeled  person  he  is  to  day.  as 
pompous,  good-humored,  and  fond  of  finery.  The  Assyr- 
ian statues  are  good,  recognizable  likenesses  of  eminent 
living  Jewish  merchants,  in  London  and  New  Orleans. 
The  old  Pharaohs  of  the  monuments  can  be  matched  for 
face  and  figure  any  day  in  the  bazars  of  Cairo.  The  grey- 
hound of  the  tombs  is  the  same  variety  now  used  for  cours- 
ing hares  in  the  desert.  The  camel,  the  ass,  and  the 
Arab,  and  Assyrian  breeds  of  horses,  have  not  been  at  all 
improved  in  forty  centuries.  Even  Mr.  Darwin's  favorite 
pigeons  would  seem  to  have  ceased  to  vary;  for  the  carrier- 
pigeons  let  loose  by  Sesostris,  to  carry  the  news  of  his 
coronation  to  all  the  cities  of  Egypt,  do  not  differ  a  feather 
from  the  modern  Egyptian  carrier-pigeons.  The  various 
wild  animals,  and  many  of  the  plants,  are  represented  on 
^ these  monuments  in  great  variety.  Among  these  I  have 
noted  the  lotus,  the  papyrus,  the  leek,  the  palm,  wheat, 
barley,  and  millet;  the  crocodile,  the  frog,  the  crane, 
the  flamingo,  the  ibis,  the  goose,  the  owl,  the  ostrich,  the 
peacock;  and  of  beasts  the  now  famous  ancestral  ape, 
Ptolemy's  tame  lion,  the  leopard,  the  gazelle,  the  hippo- 
potamus, the  giraffe,  and  the  wild  boar,  and  many  others. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  71 

But  there  is  not  the  least  perceptible  change  in  the  corre- 
sponding species  now  inhabiting  I^gypt  and  the  desert. 

We  can  go  further  than  the  mere  external  appearance ; 
for  we  can  actually  dissect  specimens  of  the  various  ani- 
mals, and  thus  satisfy  ourselves  whether  any  physiological 
change,  amounting  to  a  transmutation  of  species,  hiS  oc- 
curred, or  was  in  progsess;  and  the  investigation  has  been 
conducted  by  no  less  a  physiologist  and  zoologist  than  Cu- 
vier,  whose  authority  in  such  matters  no  naturalist  will  dis- 
pute. And  this  is  what  he  says:  "  It  might  seem  as  if  the 
ancient  Egyptians  had  been  inspired  by  nature,  for  the 
purpose  of  transmitting  to  after  ages  a  monument  of  her 
natural  history.  That  strange  and  whimsical  people,  by 
embalming  with  so  much  care  the  brutes  which  were  the 
objects  of  their  stupid  adoration,  have  left  us  in  their 
sacred  grottoes  cabinets  of  zoology  almost  complete. 
Climate  has  conspired  with  art  to  preserve  the  bodies  from 
corruption,  and  we  can  now  assure  ourselves  with  our  own 
eyes  what  was  the  state  of  a  good  number  of  species  three 
thousand  ye  irs  ago.  *  *  *  I  have  endeavored  to  col- 
lect all  the  ancient  documents  respecting  the  forms  of  ani- 
mals, and  there  are  none  equal  to  those  furnished  by  the 
Egyptians,  both  in  regard  to  their  antiquity  and  abund- 
ance, I  have  examined  with  the  greatest  care  the  en- 
graved figures  of  quadrupeds  and  birds  upon  the  obelisks 
brought  from  Egypt  to  ancient  Rome;  and  all  these  fig- 
U7es,  one  with  another,  have  a  perfect  resemblance  to  their 
ir  tended  objects,  such  as  they  still  are  in  our  days.  My 
If  arned  friend,  Geofi'rey  St  Hilaire,  convinced  me  of  the 
importance  of  this  research,  and  carefully  collected  in  the 
tombs  and  temples  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt  as  many 
mummies  of  aaimals  as  he  could  procure.  He  has  brought 
home  the  mummies  of  cats,  ibises,  birds  of  prey,  dogs, 
crocodiles,  and  the  head  of  a  bull.  After  the  most  atten- 
tive and  detailed  examination,  not  the  smallest  difference 


72  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  'i 

is  to  be  perceived  between  these  animals  and  those  of  the 
same  species  which  we  now  see,  any  more  than  between 
human  mummies  and  skeletons  of  men  of  the  present  day."* 

There  is  then  not  the  first  fact,  or  appearance  of  a  fact, 
to  be  adduced  in  proof  of  the  change  of  species  either  by 
domestication,  or  Natural  Selection,  or  any  other  process 
known  to  man.  That  any  such  evolution  of  any  animal, 
or  plant,  into  one  of  another  species  ever  occurred,  is  a 
mere  empty  notion,  in  support  of  which  no  facts  can  be 
adduced.  All  the  animals  and  plants  of  which  we  know 
anything  have  remained  unchanged  since  the  beginning  of 
man's  observation  of  them.  The  theory  endeavors  to  ac- 
count for  a  change  which  never  happened.  It  is  a  mere 
empty  dream,  unworthy  of  a  serious  consideration  by  any 
mind  imbued  with  the  first  principle  of  inductive  science — 
namely,  that  all  science  is  the  orderly  knowledge  of  facts; 
and  whose  first  rule  is,  first  ascertain  your  facts. 

But  it  is  urged,  that  though  such  a  change  has  not  oc- 
curred during  the  brief  period  of  human  history,  it  may 
have  been  practicable  in  the  lengthened  periods  revealed 
by  geology,  and  while  the  forces  of  nature  were  more  vig- 
orous during  the  youth  of  our  planet  This,  in  fact,  is 
the  grand  resource  of  the  modern  evolutionists — the  al- 
most infinite  periods  and  possibilities  of  geology. 

We  refuse,  however,  to  follow  Mr.  Powell  into  those  un- 
explored realms  of  the  infinite  past  and  discuss  the  possi- 
bilities of  ages,  of  which  "  by  the  conditions  we  can  not 
know  anything  whatever."  We  will  go  as  far  as  the  geo- 
logical strata  furnish  us  with  any  facts,  any  evidences  of 
life,  any  traces  of  plants  or  animals  of  which  correspond- 
ing species  still  exist,  and  will  unhesitatingly  affirm,  on  the 
authority  of  the  most  eminent  geologists,  that  such  geo- 
logical representatives  of  existing  species  furnish  no  evi- 


♦Tbeory  of  the  Earth,  123. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  73 

dence  whatever  of  evolution  into  higher  forms.  On  the 
contrary,  we  shall  show  that  many  species  have  existed 
without  the  slightest  change  for  many  thousands,  aye,  and 
millions  of  years,  sufficiently  long  to  establish  the  fact  of 
the  permanence  of  species  during  the  geologic  ages  known 
to  man. 

Geologists  are  generally  agreed  that  the  first  Florida 
Coral  Reef  is  at  least  30,000  years  old ;  but  Agassiz  asserts, 
uncontradicted,  that  the  insect  which  built  it  has  not  altered 
in  the  least  in  that  period  and  he  says  regarding  it:  *'  These 
facts  furnish  evidence,  as  direct  as  we  can  obtain  in  any 
branch  of  physical  inquiry,  that  some  at  least  of  the  species 
of  animals  now  existing  have  been  in  existence  30,000 
years,  and  have  not  undergone  the  slightest  change  in  that 
period."  But  we  can  go  still  further  back,  and  demonstrate 
the  permanence  of  vegetable  structure.  Hugh  Miller  says  : 
"The  oak,  the  birch,  the  hazel,  the  Scotch  fir,  all  lived,  I 
repeat,  in  what  is  now  Britain,  ere  the  last  great  depression 
of  the  land.  The  gigantic  northern  elephant  and  rhinoc- 
eros, extinct  for  untold  ages,  forced  their  way  through 
the  tangled  branches;  and  the  British  tiger  and  hyena 
harbored  in  their  thickets.  Cuvier  framed  an  argument  for 
the  fixity  of  species  on  the  fact  that  the  birds  and  beasts 
of  the  catacombs  were  identical  in  every  respect  with  the 
animals  of  the  same  kind  that  live  now.  But  what,  it  has 
been  asked,  is  a  brief  period  of  3,000  years,  when  com- 
pared with  the  geologic  ages  ?  Or  how  could  any  such  ar- 
gument be  founded  on  a  basis  so  little  extended?  It  is, 
however,  to  no  such  narrow  basis  that  we  can  refer  in  the 
case  of  these  woods  All  human  history  is  comprised  in 
the  nearer  corner  of  the  immense  period  they  measure  out; 
and  yet  from  their  first  appearance  in  creation  till  now, 
they  have  not  altered  a  single  fiber.  And  such  on  this 
poiut  is  the  invariable  testimony  of  Paleontologic  science, 
testimony  so  invariable  that  no  great  Paleontologist  was 


74  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

ever  yet  an  asserter  of  the  Development  Hvpothesis."* 
To  the  same  purpose  let  us  hear  Huxley's  testimony,  since 
no  one  will  suspect  him  of  undue  respect  for  Moses:  "Ob- 
viously if  the  earliest  fossiliferous  rocks  now  known  are 
coeval  with  the  commencement  of  life,  and  if  their  con- 
tents give  us  any  just  conception  of  the  earliest  fauna  and 
flora,  the  insignificant  amount  of  modification  which  can 
be  demonstrated  to  have  taken  place  in  any  one  group  or 
animals  and  plants,  is  quite  incompatible  with  the  hypo- 
thesis that  all  living  forms  are  the  results  of  a  process  of 
necessary  progressive  development  entirely  comprised 
within  the  time  represented  by  the  fossiliferous  rocks. "f 

We  are  fully  warranted,  then,  in  alleging,  that  no  such 
transmutation  of  species  is  known  to  science,  as  an  existing 
fact,  or  as  having  ever  occurred. 

As  to  the  supposition  on  which  the  evolutionists  fall 
back,  that  such  a  miracle  might  have  happened  thousands 
of  millions  of  years  before  the  formation  of  the  lowest 
rocks  known  to  us,  we  might  well  decline  the  discussion  of 
may -he's  as  facts  of  science. 

But  there  is  a  positive  denial  of  unimaginable  periods 
of  time  for  Mr.  Darwin's  evolution  to  try  its  blundering 
experiments.  We  are  empowered  to  say  positively,  No ! 
There  is  no  such  length  of  time  for  you,  Mr.  Darwin, 
on  this  little  globe  at  least.  This  rotating  world  had 
a  beginning;  so  had  our  moon;  and  our  sun,  too,  began 
to  burn  one  day.  And  there  are  data  of  the  revolu- 
tion of  these  bodies,  and  of  the  secular  cooling  of  the 
earth,  and  of  the  gradual  combustion  of  the  sun,  and  of 
the  retardation  of  the  earth's  motions,  from  which  SirWm. 
Thompson  (in  his  Treatise  on  Geological  Time)  calculates, 
that  our  earth  has  not  been  in  a  fit  state  for  plants  and  anr- 
mals  for  more  than  a  hundred  millions  of  years;  and  he 

*Testimony  of  the  Rocks,  77. 

t Address  at  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Geological  Society,  1862. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  75 

demonstrates  the  absurdity  of  the  demand  for  unlimited 
time,  as  contradictory  to  the  facts  of  physical  astronomy. 
Hence  we  deny  the  possibility  of  evolution  in  the  infinite 
ages  of  the  past  There  never  were  any  such  ages  on  this 
world  of  ours. 

4.  Failing  to  find  facts,  evolutionists  fall  back  upon 
analogies,  and  support  their  hypothesis  by  the  supposed 
analogy  of  the  growth  of  the  embryos  of  all  plants  and  ani- 
mals from  germs  alleged  to  he  originaHy  perfectly  similar — 
simple  protoplasm  cells,  which  by  subsequent  evolution, 
differentiate  themselves  as  widely  as  the  moss  from  the 
man. 

The  subject  is  too  obscure  for  popular  discussion.  I  can 
only  announce  the  results  of  the  latest  and  most  authorita- 
tive researches  * 

1.  Analogy  is  a  very  unsafe  guide  here,  because  the  dif- 
ferences between  the  limited  life  of  the  individual,  and  the 
alleged  unlimited  life  of  the  race,  are  precisely  those  of 
which  we  have  no  analogy. 

2.  It  is  not  true  that  "  the  original  substratum  or  ma- 
terial is  in  every  instance  alike,"  nor  that  the  "primordial 
cell  is  in  every  instance  the  same,"  whether  of  the  'lichen 
or  the  man ;  ''f  nor  as  others  allege,  "■  that  chemical  reagents 
detect  no  diflferences  between  them."  Chemical  reagents 
are  very  clumsy  instruments  for  the  analysis  of  living  be- 
ings, and  their  properties  and  powers;  which  are  the  antag- 
onists of  chemical  reactions.  Nevertheless,  heat  is  a  well- 
known  chemical  agent,  and  the  application  of  heat  to  a 
fertilized,  and  to  an  unfertilized,  germ  develops  a  whole 
world  of  difference  between  them.  The  one  becomes  a 
chicken,  the  other  an  addled  egg.  Moreover,  the  applica- 
tion of  different  degrees  of  heat  to  different  germs  pro- 

♦Agassiz's  Methods  of  Study. 

f  Draper's  Human  Physiology,  506. 


76  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

duces  the  most  various  reactions.  The  germs  of  trout  are 
speedily  killed  by  the  moderate  temperature  of  65°  Fahren- 
heit, while  the  germs  of  most  animalculae  and  plants  de- 
velop rapidly  at  that  temperature.  Such  instances  might 
be  multiplied,  but  these  are  sufficient  to  contradict  the 
rash  assertion  of  sameness,  because  a  hasty  observer  did 
not  take  pains  to  discover  differences. 

3.  There  are  four  distinct  plans  of  structure  in  the  ani- 
mal kingdom,  and  at  least  three,  perhaps  more,  in  the  veg- 
etable kingdom;  and  every  germ,  from  the  first  instant 
when  its  evolution  can  be  seen  at  all,  is  seen  to  develop 
only  according  to  its  own  proper  method.  There  is  no 
more  confusion  of  germs,  or  embryos,  than  of  p'ants  or  an- 
imals. 

4.  No  instance  has  ever  been  known  of  a  germ  produc- 
ing an  animal,  or  plant,  of  another  species,  by  any  process 
of  stopping  short  of  ripening,  or  undue  prolongation  of 
it.  Every  seed  breeds  true  to  its  kind,  or  not  at  all,  or 
produces  a  deformity.  Embryology  utterly  refuses  the 
notion  of  the  transmutation  of  species. 

Mr.  Darwin's  various  references  to  rudimentary  organs, 
like  the  bones  of  a  hand  in  the  flipper  of  the  whale,  or  the 
teats  of  male  animals,  and  the  like,  can  hardly  be  called 
arguments.  He  tries  to  account  for  them  and  fails;  ac- 
knowledging ignorance  of  the  laws  of  heredity.  Some  of 
them  he  will  have  to  be  young  organs  in  process  of  evo- 
lution, others  organs  aborted  for  want  of  exercise.  In 
this  category  he  ought  to  place  the  tail  which  he  ought  to 
have  inherited  from  his  ancestors,  as  he  is  greatly  exercised 
to  know  what  became  of  it.  But  it  is  evident  that  his  at- 
tempts to  build  arguments  on  such  things,  and  to  account 
for  occasional  variations  by  atarism,  are  in  contradiction 
to  his  principles  Most  of  the  known  instances  of  the 
origination  of  permanent  varieties  were  not  the  result  of 
infinitesimal    improvements,    but  were   sudden   and    com- 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  77 

plete  at  once.  The  Japan  peacocks,  the  short-legged 
sheep,  the  porcupine  man  and  his  family,  and  the  six-fin- 
gered men,  were  not  at  all  the  results  of  a  slow  process  of 
evolution ;  on  the  contrary,  tbey  were  born  so,  complete  at 
once,  in  utter  contradiction  of  the  theory. 

5.  The  only  other  line  of  argument,  which  has  any  show 
of  probability,  is  that  based  upon  the  gradations  of  the 
various  orders  of  plants  and  animals.  Not  but  that  there 
are  many  other  arguments  adduced,  but  they  are  of  too 
technical  a  character  to  be  intelligible  to  any  but  zoologists, 
and  of  too  little  weight  to  demand  consideration  after  the 
leading  arguments  are  overturned.  But  this  argument 
from  gradation,  though  logically  unsound,  is  plausibly 
specious,  and  therefore  demands  notice. 

By  far  the  ablest  exhibition  of  this  argument  is  that 
made  by  Lamarck,  and  we  give  it  as  he  presents  it:  *'The 
greater  the  abundance  of  natural  objects  assembled  to- 
gether, the  more  do  we  discover  proofs  that  everything 
passes  by  insensible  shades  into  something  else ;  that  even 
the  more  remarkable  differences  are  evanescent,  and  that 
nature  has  for  the  most  part  left  us  nothing  at  our  disposal 
for  establishing  distinctions,  save  trifling,  and  in  some  re- 
spects puerile  particularities.  We  find  that  many  genera 
among  plants  and  animals  are  of  such  an  extent,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  number  of  species  referred  to  them,  that  the 
study  and  determination  of  these  last  have  become  almost 
impracticable.  When  the  species  are  arranged  in  a  series, 
and  placed  near  to  each  othes,  with  a  due  regard  to  their 
natural  affinities,  they  each  differ  in  so  minute  a  degree 
from  those  next  adjoining,  that  they  almost  melt  into  each 
other,  and  are  in  a  manner  confounded  together.  If  we 
see  isolated  species,  we  may  presume  the  absence  of  some 
more  closely  connected,  and  which  have  not  yet  been  dis- 
covered. Already  there  are  genera,  and  even  entire  or- 
ders, nay,  whole  classes  which  present  this  state  of  things." 


78  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

He  then  goes  on  to  present,  "as  a  guide  to  conjecture," 
what  his  successors  now  assert  as  a  fact:  "In  the  first 
place,  if  we  examine  the  whole  series  of  known  animals, 
from  one  extremity  to  the  (Tther,  when  they  are  arranged 
in  the  order  of  their  natural  relations,  we  find  that  we  may 
pass  progressively,  or  at  least  with  very  few  interruptions, 
from  beiniiS  of  more  simple  to  those  of  more  compound 
structure;  and  in  proportion  as  the  complexity  of  their 
organization  increases,  the  number  and  dignity  of  their 
faculties  increase  also.  Among  plants  a  similar  approx- 
imation to  a  graduated  scale  of  being  is  apparent.  Sec- 
ondly, it  appears,  from  geological  observations,  that  plants 
and  animals  of  more  simple  organization  existed  on  the 
globe  before  the  appearance  of  those  of  more  compound 
structure,  and  the  latter  were  successively  formed  at  more 
modern  periods,  each  new  race  being  more  fully  developed 
than  the  most  perfect  of  the  preceding  one."* 

From  this  gradation  of  nature,  thus  stated,  the  evolu- 
tionists go  on  to  infer  genealogy,  the  birth  descent  of  the 
larger  from  the  smaller,  and  of  the  more  complex  from  the 
simpler  forms,  as  the  only  scientific  explanation.  But  it 
is  by  no  means  the  only  scientific  explanation  of  the  order 
of  nature.  The  best  naturalists,  from  Moses  to  Agassiz, 
have  regarded  the  order  of  nature  as  the  development  of 
the  divine  idea,  have  prosecuted  their  researches  on  that 
view,  and  have  regarded  that  as  a  sufficient  and  scientific 
explanation  of  the  gradation  of  plants  and  animals,  as  they 
actually  exist. 

The  idea  of  birth  descent  can  not  be  logically  connected 
with  that  of  gradation;  especially  with  a  gradation  upward. 
Were  the  order  of  nature  such  as  Lamarck  describes,  how 
could  any  man  logically  infer  the  birth  descent  of  each  of 
its  classes  from  the  next  below  ?  Here  is  an  ironmonger's 
sample  card  of  wood  screws,  beginning  with  those  one- 

♦Lyell's  Principles  of  Geology,  Book  III.,  Chapter  33. 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  79 

quarter  of  an  inch  long,  and  proceeding  by  gradations  of 
one-sixteentli  of  an  inch  to  those  of  four  inches.  Does 
the  gradation  show  that  the  little  ones  begot  the  big  ones? 
It  may  be  said  the  wood  screws  do  not  beget  progeny. 
Well,  here  is  a  hill  containing  twenty- three  potatoes, 
weighing  from  half  an  ounce  to  half  a  pound,  and  quite 
regularly  graded.  Did  the  small  potatoes  beget  the  big 
ones?  The  inference  of  birth  descent  from  gradation  is 
utterly  illogical,  and  of  a  piece  with  the  incoherency  which 
we  have  seen  in  the  other  parts  of  the  theory.  It  never 
could  be  inferred  from  the  facts  stated,  even  did  nature 
correspond  to  Lamarck's  description. 

But  nature  does  not  correspond  to  Lamarck's  descrip- 
tion. That  description  corresponded  moderately,  perhaps, 
to  the  science  of  his  day,  which  was  based  chiefly  upon 
external  resemblances;  but  no  scientific  naturalist  of  the 
present  day  would  accept  it  as  a  correct  statement  of  the 
facts  revealed  by  modern  science. 

In  the  first  place  there  is  no  such  imperceptible  blend- 
ing and  shading  off  of  species  as  the  description  would 
imply,  obliterating  all  distinctions  of  species,  and  rendering 
it  impossible  even  for  a  naturalist  to  distinguish  one  species 
from  another.  Since  the  time  of  Lamarck,  structure  and 
physiology  have  been  more  studied  than  mere  external  ap- 
pearances ;  so  that  from  a  tooth  or  bone  Cuvier  or  Agassiz 
could  reconstruct  an  animal,  and  indicate  its  internal  or- 
ganization, as  well  as  its  form  and  habits.  But  even  in 
Lamarck's  days,  and  even  to  the  most  uneducated,  there 
was  no  such  imperceptible  shading  and  blending  as  the 
theory  requires.  It  is  well  to  look  here  at  its  requirements, 
for  they  are  not  fully  presented  by  its  friends.  Mr.  Dar- 
win gives  us  a  diagram  exhibiting  the  variation  of'  an  orig- 
inal species  into  a  score  or  so  of  varieties,  ending  in  distinct 
species.  But  this  is  very  far,  indeed,  below  the  necessities 
of  the  case.     The  horse  hair  worm  lays  8,000,000  of  eggs; 


80  WAS  TOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

and  tte  primeval  germ,  whatever  it  was,  could  hardly  be 
less  fertile,  since  fertility  increases  with  simplicity  of  struc- 
ture. But,  taking  8,000,000  to  begin  with,  here  were  as 
many  varieties;  since  no  two  of  them,  or  of  any  creature, 
could  be  exactly  alike.  The  next  generation  would  give 
8,000,000  times  as  many  varieties,  and  so  on  till  Natural 
Selection  began  to  thin  off  the  feeble.  But  here  we  have, 
instead  of  a  few  well-marked  varieties,  an  infinite  multitude 
of  imperceptible  variations,  rendering  classification  impos- 
sible. And  as  all  these  were  only  varieties  of  the  same 
breed,  they  would  breed  together,  and  thus  still  more  con- 
fuse the  complexity,  and  render  distinction  of  species  im- 
possible. For,  in  spite  of  all  Mr.  Darwin  has  to  say  about 
the  extinction  of  the  weaker  varieties,  the  fact  is,  they  are 
not  at  all  extinguished,  but  keep  their  ground  as  well  as 
the  higher  classes,  or  perhaps  better.  And  if  a  snail,  or  a 
worm,  can  contrive  to  live  now  in  an  unimproved  condition, 
why  should  its  improving  cousin  die  oflF?  Did  its  improve- 
ment kill  it?  And  so  of  improving  mollusks,  and  well- 
doing radiates,  and  aspiring  rabbits,  and  all  the  rest.  The 
world  ought  to  be  so  full  of  them  that  no  man  could  sort 
them  ofiF  into  species,  or  tell  which  was  fish,  which  was 
flesh,  and  which  red  herring;  and  no  pork  packer  could 
distinguish  hog  from  dog. 

But  instead  of  any  such  horrible  confusion  of  a  world 
full  of  mongrels,  we  discover  a  clear  and  well  defined  dis- 
tinction of  species,  known  even  to  the  poor  animals  them- 
selves, and  by  their  instincts  made  known  to  all  mankind. 
The  Creator,  who  created  all  creatures  after  their  kind, 
implanted  in  them  an  instinct  of  breeding  only  with  their 
own  species;  and  placed  a  bar  in  the  way  of  man's  vain 
attempts  to  work  confusion  of  species,  by  rendering  the 
hybrid  ofispring  of  diff'erent  species  sterile,  or  only  capable 
of  breeding  back  to  the  pure  blood.  Innumerable  attempts 
have  been  made  by  fraud  and  force  to  procure  cross  breeds 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  81 

of  diflferent  fipecies  of  plants  and  animals,  but  always  with 
the  same  result  — the  extinction  of  the  progeny  of  the  hy- 
brid, unless  bred  back  to  nature.  While  a  mingling  of 
various  breeds  of  the  same  species —horses,  sheep,  or  cat- 
tle— generally  increases  fertility,  the  attempt  to  mingle 
different  species,  as  the  horse  and  the  ass,  though  so  sim- 
ilar, always  produces  sterile  offspring.  It  is  imposKible  to 
conceive  any  form  in  which  the  Creator  could  more  em- 
phatically protest  against  the  attempt  to  confuse  thjB  dis- 
tinctions of  species  He  established. 

God  has  fixed  a  barrier  against  the  mixture  or  confusion 
of  species  by  cross  breeding,  by  ordaining  the  sterility  of 
hybrids.  Mr.  Darwin  labors  in  vain  to  explain  away  this 
great  fact.  It  can  not  be  explained  into  conformity  with 
the  evolution  theory;  for  in  that  theory  all  species  are 
only  breeds  or  varieties  of  one  species,  and  ought  to  in- 
crease their  fertility  by  cross  breeding.  With  all  scientific 
naturalists,  as  with  all  people  of  common  sense,  this  proves 
that  species  have  a  distinct  existence  in  nature,  and  that 
the  Creator  has  ordained  the  continuance  of  their  distinct 
existence;  which  is  the  denial  of  evolution. 

When  Mr.  Darwin  retreats  into  the  geologic  ages,  and 
confessing  that  his  principle  has  ceased  to  be  opera- 
tive now  in  our  world,  and  refers  us  to  them  for  such 
evolution  of  one  species  from  another,  he  abandons  the 
fundamental  principle  of  his  school — the  uniformity  of 
nature — and  falls  back  on  Christian  ground,  the  necessity 
for  supernatural  origins.  He  virtually  admits  the  death 
or  superannuation  of  Natural  Selection,  since  it  has  re- 
tired from  the  business  of  species-making. 

But  when  we  go  back  to  those  old  geologic  ages,  we  find 

that  species  were  then  not  only  as  distinct  as  now,  but  that 

the  distinctions  were  even  bolder  and  more  visible.     Many 

of  them  have   ceased   to  exist,  but  they  have   left  their 

6 


82  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

shells,  their  petrified  casts,  and  their  bones,  by  which  we 
can  see  that  they  stood  apart  in  well-defined  groups,  with- 
out any  such  blendinj^  and  confusion  as  the  evolution  theory 
asserts.  Over  three  thousand  species  are  already  classified. 
Between  every  two  of  them  there  ought  to  be,  on  Mr 
Darwin's  showing,  a  hundred  intermediate  variations  at  the 
least ;  and  between  some  of  the  more  widely  separated  forms 
there  ought  to  be  thousands  of  intermediate  varieties;  as 
for  instance  between  the  bear  and  the  whale ;  and  a  still 
greater  number  between  the  mollusk  with  its  external 
shell,  and  the  vertebrate  with  its  internal  skeleton.  And 
we  ought  to  find  these  intermediate  forms  closely  connected 
with  their  parents  and  their  children.  For  intermediate 
forms  in  another  continent  could  not  be  the  connecting 
links  between  the  mollusks  and  vertebrates  of  a  distant 
country,  say  of  England.  In  the  same  strata  in  which  we 
find  the  two  ends  of  the  chain,  and  lying  between  the  two 
ends  of  the  chain,  we  ought  to  find  the  connecting  links. 
And  we  ought  to  find  a  hundred  connecting  links  for 
every  specimen  of  distinct  species,  since  Mr.  Darwin  alleges 
that  they  must  have  lived  and  died  somewhere ;  and  we  have 
seen  they  must  have  lived  and  died  right  there  where  they 
were  born,  and  where  they  begot  their  progeny.  The  geo- 
logical strata  ought  to  be  full  of  connecting  links. 

But  when  we  come  to  look  for  them  they  are  not  there. 
Geology  knows  nothing  about  them.  It  has  plenty  of  dis- 
tinct, well-defined  species — trilobites,  and  ammonites,  and 
echinoderms,  palms,  ferns,  firs,  and  mosses,  all  sorts  of 
quadrupeds  from  a  mouse  to  a  mastodon,  and  all  just  as 
clean-cut  and  well-defined  as  the  species  of  existing  ani- 
mals. Mr.  Darwin  can  not  find  his  connecting  links  be- 
tween the  species,  which  ought  to  have  been  a  hundred 
times  more  plentiful  than  the  species  they  connected. 
These  connecting  links  are  missing  links.  He  ought  to 
be  able  to  overwhelm  his  opponents,  and  bury  them  under 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  83 

mountains  of  the  bones  of  intermediate  species.  But  all 
his  friends  can  do  is  to  suggest  about  half  a  dozen,  while 
he  needs  three  hundred  thousand.  He  can  not  pay  half  a 
cent  on  the  dollar.  In  his  grief  he  turns  round  and  abuses 
the  defectiveness  of  the  geological  record,  which  he  says 
he  could  never  have  suspected  of  being  so  defective  but  for 
this  failure  to  meet  his  drafts.  But  he  need  not  blame  the 
geological  record  for  not  preserving  bones  of  animals  which 
never  lived.  Geology  says  there  never  was  any  such  con- 
fusion of  species  as  evolution  asserts. 

But  not  only  does  the  general  structure  of  the  web  of 
nature  present  a  clearly  striped  pattern,  instead  of  the 
mottled  gray  of  the  theory — neither  the  beginning,  nor 
the  middle,  nor  the  end  is  like  what  the  evolution  theory 
would  produce. 

The  gradation  does  not  begin,  as  the  theory  asserts  and 
demands,  with  the  monads.  On  the  contrary,  we  find  that 
there  are  four  kingdoms  of  animal  life — in  an  ascending 
scale — the  radiate,  or  starfish;  the  mollusk,  or  oyster;  the 
articulate,  or  insect;  and  the  vertebrate,  or  animals  with 
backbones.  Now  the  evolution  ought  to  have  begun  at  the 
bottom,  with  the  radiate,  the  coral,  and  the  starfish;  it 
should  have  gone  upward,  the  coral  developing  into  the 
oyster,  and  the  oyster  into  the  lobster,  and  the  lobster  into 
the  salmon,  and  so  on.  But  instead  of  that  we  discover, 
away  down  in  the  Silurian  strata,  at  the  very  beginning  of 
life,  all  the  four  kingdoms — the  radiates,  the  mollusks,  the 
articulates,  and  the  fish!  Evidently,  then,  there  was  no 
such  beginning  of  the  world  as  evolutionists  suppose. 

Then  as  we  work  upward  along  the  line  of  march,  and 
of  the  development  of  the  divine  idea,  we  observe  that 
when  new  species  were  introduced,  they  did  not  work  up 
slowly  from  small  and  weak  beginnings ;  beginning  with 
dwarfs  and  growing  up  to  giants  ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  the 
giants  head  the  column.     The  geological  books  are  full  of 


84  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

them — sharks  forty  feet  long,  frogs  as  big  as  oxen,  ichthyo- 
saurus and  plesiosaurus  of  fabulous  proportions — were  not 
their  skeletons  preserved— pterodactyles,  ox  bats,  as  big  as 
a  dog,  the  mastodon  giganteus,  beside  which  an  ordinary 
modern  elephant  is  like  a  Shetland  pony  beside  a  dray 
horse,  ferns  as  big  as  oak  trees,  and  mosses  eighteen  inches 
in  diameter,  shell  fish  of  the  nautilus  order  the  size  of  din- 
ner plates,  and  crusteceans,  cousins  to  the  lobster,  three 
feet  long.  And  all  this  at  the  very  first  start  in  life  of 
these  respective  families,  and  in  overwhelming  multitudes. 
That  was  no  age  of  small  beginnings,  and  small  progressive 
improvements.  On  the  contrary,  these  old  families,  like 
some  other  old  families,  seem  to  have  rather  lost  rank,  and 
bulk,  and  influence ;  at  least  their  modern  representatives 
cut  no  such  figure  in  the  world  as  their  predecessors. 

As  we  proceed  along  the  line  we  meet  gaps  which  slay 
the  theory  of  genealogical  descent  altogether.  A  gap  is 
fatal  to  it.  If  a  family  dies  out,  that  is  the  end  of  it.  You 
can  not  resuscitate  it  after  a  few  centuries,  and  go  on  with 
that  breed  ;  much  less  can  you  pick  up  a  breed  quite  dif- 
ferent, and  attach  it  to  your  old  genealogy.  But  in  the  line 
of  evolution  we  meet  these  fatal  gaps ;  and  no  evolutionist 
has  bridged  them,  because  they  can  not  possibly  be  bridged. 

The  first  great  gap  is  the  abyss  between  death  and  life. 
No  human  power  can  cross  it.  How  could  the  chemical 
actions  of  dead  matter  infuse  vitality  into  the  first  germ, 
or  bud  of  a  plant?  For  chemical  actions  are  the  antago- 
nists of  life,  and  constantly  laboring  to  destroy  the  living 
organism,  and  finally  they  succeed.  There  is  no  process  of 
evolution  known  to  man  which  can  carry  evolution  across 
this  abyss.  But  till  evolution  crosses  this  gulf  it  can  not 
even  begin  to  operate.     This  first  abyss  is  its  grave. 

But,  supposing  life  begun  in  the  plant  first,  as  the  theory 
requires,  there  is  another  gap  between  the  life  of  the  plant 
and  that  of  the  animal ;  for  all  animal  life  is  sustained  by  an- 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY?  85 

other  sort  of  food  than  that  which  feeds  the  vegetable.  The 
vegetable  feeds  solely  on  chemical,  unorganized  matters ;  the 
animal  solely  on  matter  organized,  on  some  plant,  or  on  some 
other  animal  which  feeds  on  plants.  No  animal  can  live 
on  the  food  of  plants.  Here  then  is  another  gap  which 
can  not  be  bridged  over,  nor  crossed;  for  the  plant  in 
process  of  conversion  into  an  animal  is  in  process  of  star- 
vation, and  when  the  process  is  about  to  be  completed,  it 
will  end  like  the  miser's  horse,  whose  master  diminished 
his  oats  Darwinianly,  a  single  grain  a  day,  until  he  had 
brought  him  to  live  on  just  one  grain  per  day,  when,  alas! 
the  victim  of  the  experiment  died.  And  so  ends  evolution 
experiment  No.  2. 

Then  we  come  on  a  multitude  of  gaps,  breaks  in  the  uni- 
formity of  nature,  called  for  by  the  evolutionists,  between 
the  species  which  will  not  breed  together.  There  ought 
to  be  no  such  species  on  the  theory;  or,  if  there  are,  there 
ought  to  be  a  multitude  of  intervening  varieties  toning 
down  the  interval ;  for  instance,  between  the  horse  and 
the  cow,  and  between  the  sheep  and  the  hog.  All  the  in- 
genuity of  all  the  evolutionists  has  been  tasked  in  vain  to 
produce  any  instance  of  the  confusion  of  two  such  species, 
or  of  the  production  of  a  new  true  species  by  the  intermix- 
ture of  blood.  But  they  might  just  as  well  try  to  convert 
iron  into  gold,  or  sulphur  into  carbon.  In  fact,  evolution 
is  the  modern  physiological  form  of  the  old  chemical  su- 
perstition, alchemy,  substituting  for  the  transmutation  of 
metals  the  problem  of  the  transmutation  of  animals. 

It  were  endless  to  attempt  to  exhibit  the  impossibilities 
of  crossing  the  gaps  between  the  water-breathing  fish  and 
the  air-breathing  animal ;  between  the  flying-bird  and  the 
quadruped  ;  between  instinct  and  education ;  between  brute 
selfishness  and  maternal  afi"ection;  between  the  habits  of 
the  solitary  and  those  of  the  gregarious,  and  those  of  the 
colonial  insects  and  animals.    No  one  of  these  is  accounted 


86  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

for  satisfactorily  by  the  theory  of  evolution.  But  space 
forbids  the  attempt. 

We  only  cite  one  other  gulf  which  the  theory  can  not 
cross :  the  gulf  between  the  brute  and  the  man.  We  should 
rather  say  the  three  gulfs;  for  between  man's  body  and 
that  of  the  brute  there  is  a  gap  which  Natural  Selection 
can  not  cross ;  another  between  man's  intellectual  powers 
and  those  of  brutes ;  and  the  third,  and  widest  of  all,  be- 
tween his  conscience  and  their  brutal  appetites. 

The  gulf  between  man's  body  and  that  of  any  brute  is 
marked  along  the  whole  line,  from  the  solid  basis  of  the 
feet,  enabling  him  to  stand  erect,  look  upward  and  behold 
the  stars;  along  the  line  of  the  stiff  backbone,  maintaining 
the  dignified  posture ;  to  the  hands,  on  which  treatises 
have  been  written,  displaying  their  wonderful  superiority 
over  those  of  all  other  creatures,  and  enabling  man  to  do 
what  no  other  animal  has  done,  to  fill  the  world  with  his 
handiworks,  and  alter  the  very  face  of  nature  with  his  ax, 
and  spade,  and  steam  engine.  His  tongue  and  organs  of 
articulate  speech  alone,  were  there  no  other  characteristic, 
proclaim  him  different  from  all  other  animals ;  none  of 
those  resembling  him  in  outward  form  making  the  slightest 
attempts  toward  articulate  language  or  being  able  to  do  so. 

Man  alone,  of  all  the  animals,  possesses  no  natural  cov- 
ering, but  is  exposed  naked  to  the  inclemency  of  the  ele- 
ments. What  little  hair  he  possesses  is  chiefly  on  the 
breast,  where  it  is  of  little  use  as  a  covering,  and  on  the 
head,  which  in  other  animals  is  never  better  protected  than 
the  body.  Mr.  Darwin  alleges  that  the  first  men  were  hairy, 
like  apes.  Well,  how  did  they  lose  their  hair?  Not  by 
Natural  Selection,  which  only  perpetuates  profitable  varia- 
tions; but  the  loss  of  hair  to  an  ape  would  be  as  unprofit- 
able as  the  loss  of  your  clothes  to  you.  Not  by  Sexual 
Selection,  for  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  nudity 
was  ever  popular  in  apedom.    We  have  undoubted  cviJcuco, 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ?  87 

in  the  two  bone  needles  found  with  the  bones  of  the  man 
of  Mentone,  that  the  primeval  men  were  naked,  and  com- 
plete proof  that  Natural  Selection  could  not  eflfect  such  a 
disadvantageous  change  had  they  been  hairy.  Here,  then, 
we  have  an  inferiority  to  other  animals  in  the  animal  struc- 
ture, strangely  at  variance  with  the  general  superiority,  and 
only  to  be  accounted  for  as  an  educational  provision. 

But  chiefly  in  the  human  head  does  the  great  outward 
distinction  appear.  The  brain  is  the  great  instrument  with 
which  the  mind  works.  You  can  gauge  the  strength  of 
Ulysses  by  his  bow,  and  the  bulk  of  the  giant  by  the  staff 
of  his  spear,  which  was  like  a  weaver's  beam.  The  brain 
of  the  largest  ape  is  about  thirty  two  cubic  inches.  The 
brains  of  the  wildest  Australians  are  more  than  double 
that  capacity.  They  measure  from  seventy- five  inches  to 
ninety.  Europeans'  brains  measure  from  ninety  to  one 
hundred  inches.  There  are  instances  of  Esquimaux  meas- 
uring over  ninety.  Even  the  brain  of  an  idiot  is  double 
the  size  of  that  of  the  orang  otang.  But  how  did  man  get 
this  extraordinary  development  of  brain,  far  beyond  his 
necessities?  For  the  cave  man  of  Mentone,  who  hunted 
the  bison,  had  as  good  a  head  as  Bismarck.  Natural  Selec- 
tion could  not  develop  an  ape's  brain  in  advance  of  his 
necessities.  But  here  we  have  a  prophetic  structure ;  man's 
head  developed  far  in  advance  of  his  necessities.  Here  is  a 
power  at  work  superior  to  Natural  Selection. 

With  such  an  instrument  man  has  gone  to  work  and  sup- 
plied his  deficiencies.  Inferior  to  many  animals  in  strength 
and  speed,  he  has  manufactured  weapons,  and  subdued 
them  all,  asserting  himself  as  the  lord  of  creation,  conquer- 
ing even  the  mighty  mastodon,  and  piercing  the  huge  Cale- 
donian whale  with  his  reindeer  harpoon.  He  has  remedied 
his  want  of  hair  by  the  manufacture  of  clothing  fj-om  the 
spoils  of  his  victims.  He  has  rendered  himself  independent 
of  the  weather  by  the  shelter  of  his  house.     He  has  ceased 


88  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

to  be  dependent  on  the  spontaneous  fruits  of  the  forest  by 
the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  and  so  has  become  a  cosmopolite, 
confined  to  no  province  of  creation.  He  has  constructed 
ships,  and  provisioned  them  for  long  voyages,  and  visited, 
and  colonized  every  coast  of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  America, 
and  Australia.  He  has  formed  civilized  societies  with  laws, 
government,  and  religion.  He  has  leveled  roads,  navigated 
rivers,  tunneled  mountains,  dug  navigable  canals,  constructed 
steamboats,  built  railroads,  invented  electric  telegraphs,  and 
steam  printing  presses ;  and  generally  he  has  developed 
ideas  of  society,  nationality,  and  of  the  universal  brother- 
hood of  man,  not  only  not  possible  under  the  laws  of  Nat- 
ural Selection,  but  in  the  most  direct  contrariety  to  those 
laws,  which  work  only  for  the  benefit  of  the  individual. 
Never  under  those  laws  could  any  great  community  of  ani- 
mals be  formed,  never  could  they  obtain  the  notion  of  rep- 
resentative government,  never  combine  their  powers  for  any 
national  enterprise,  nor  could  the  most  hairy  and  muscular- 
tailed  of  Mr.  Darwin's  ancestors  secure  subscribers  suflBcient 
to  warrant  him  in  starting  even  a  county  newspaper. 

But  it  is  in  the  moral  sense  which  enables  man  to  distin- 
guish right  from  wrong,  the  conscience,  which  forbids  and 
reproves  the  unbridled  indulgence  of  the  animal  appetites, 
that  we  observe  the  grand  distinction  between  man  and  the 
brute.  There  is  nothing  in  the  writings  of  evolutionists 
more  pitiable  than  their  attempts  to  degrade  conscience  into 
a  mere  gregarious  instinct,  an  outcome  of  utility  to  the 
tribe,  and  to  pleasurable  sensations,  resulting  from  the 
exercise  of  the  social  instincts.  It  would  appear  that  these 
writers  had  so  sophisticated  their  own  minds  that  they  have 
ceased  to  understand  the  fundamental,  world-wide  difference 
between  right  and  gain,  between  duty  and  pleasure.  "  Do 
justice,  though  the  heavens  fall,"  could  never  be  evolved  by 
Natural  Selection.  That  is  the  law  of  the  sharpest  tooth, 
and  the  longest  claws,  and  the  biggest  ball;  tha  Napoleonic 


WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY?  89 

theology,  whose  god  is  always  on  the  side  of  the  strongest 
battalions;  the  law  of  the  perdition  of  the  weak,  and  the 
survival  of  the  strongest.  In  obedience  to  its  laws  the 
birds  forsake  their  parents  as  soon  as  they  can  shift  for 
themselves;  the  herd  tramples  down  the  wounded  deer;  the 
wolves  devour  their  wounded  brothers;  the  queen  bee  puts 
her  sisters  to  death,  and  the  neuters  sacrifice  all  the  males 
of  the  hive.  In  obedience  to  the  laws  of  Natural  Selection, 
the  males  fight  for  the  most  attractive  females,  and  keep  as 
many  as  they  can,  and  form  societies  on  that  basis. 

But  man  has  a  sense  of  justice,  and  mercy,  and  gratitude, 
and  love.  Here  is  an  animal  who  knows  he  ought  to  tell 
truth,  and  do  right,  and  honor  his  parents,  and  respect  and 
love  his  brethren.  Whether  he  always  does  his  duty  or  not, 
he  feels  and  owns  he  ought  to  do  it.  Justice,  and  mercy, 
and  the  fear  of  God,  are  not  at  all  the  attributes  of  brutes, 
and  never  could  have  been  produced  by  the  evolution  of 
their  instincts.  No  animal  possesses  any  knowledge  of  God, 
nor  practices  any  form  of  religious  worship.  Religion,  then, 
could  not  be  the  evolution  of  what  has  no  existence. 

We  have  now  considered  the  theory  of  the  atheistical  ev 
olution   of  man,  and  of  all   plants  and  animals  from  one 
primeval  germ,  by  the  unintelligent  operation  of  the  powers 
of  nature.     We  have  seen  that  there  are  as  many  contra 
dictory  applications  of  the  theory  as  there  are  advocates  of 
it;  that  in  any  shape  it  is  incoherent,  illogical,  and  absurd; 
that  it  is  destitute  of  any  support  from  facts ;  that  the  al 
leged  analogy  of  embryology  fails  to  give  it  countenance; 
that  the  order  of  nature  in  its  gradations  is  contradictory  of 
the  theory;  that  it  utterly  fails  to  account  for  the  origin  of 
life,  for  the  distinctness  of  the  four  classes  of  the  animal 
kingdom,  for  the  distinctness  of  species  which    refuse   to 
breed  together,  for  the  absence  of  the  intermediate  forms 
necessary  to  the  theory;  and,  above  all,  that  it  can  give  no 
satisfactory  account  of  man's  bodily,  mental,  and  moral  su- 


90  WAS  YOUR  MOTHER  A  MONKEY  ? 

periority  to  all  other  animals,  nor  for  his  possession  of  a 
knowledge  of  God. 

Its  tendency,  moreover,  is  inevitably  to  degrade  man,  to 
destroy  that  sense  of  his  dignity  which  is  the  principal  se- 
curity of  human  life,  to  obliterate  a  belief  in  the  divine  or- 
igin and  sanction  of  morality,  and  in  the  existence  of  a 
future  life  of  rewards  and  punishments,  and  so  to  promote 
the  disorganization  of  society,  and  the  degradation  of  men 
to  the  level  of  brutes,  living  only  under  the  laws  of  their 
brutal  instincts.  For  all  these  reasons  we  reject  the  theory 
as  unscientific,  absurd,  degrading  to  man,  and  offensive  to 
the  God  who  made  him. 


CHAPTER   III 


Ts    God   Everybody,  and  Everybody 
God? 


Pantheism  is  that  perversion  of  reason  and  language 
which  denies  God's  personality,  and  calls  some  imaginary- 
soul  of  the  world,  or  the  world  itself,  by  his  name.  While 
Pantheists  are  fully  agreed  upon  the  propriety  of  getting 
rid  of  a  God  who  could  note  their  conduct,  and  call  them 
to  account  for  it  hereafter,  and  who  would  claim  to  exercise 
any  authority  over  them  here,  they  are  by  no  means  agreed, 
either  in  India,  Germany,  or  America,  as  to  what  they  shall 
call  by  his  name.  Public  opinion  necessitates  them  to  say 
they  believe  in  a  God,  but  almost  every  one  has  his  own  pri- 
vate opinion  as  to  what  it  is.  We  shall  speak  of  it  as  we 
hear  it  pronounced  from  the  lips  of  its  prophets,  here,  as 
well  as  in  the  writings  of  its  expounders,  in  Europe,  and 
Asia.  Some  of  them  declare,  that  it  is  some  absolutely 
unknown  cause  of  all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe,  and 
others,  that  it  is  the  universe  itself.  A  large  class  speak  of 
it  as  the  great  soul  of  the  world,  while  the  more  materialis- 
tic regard  it  as  the  world  itself,  body  and  soul ;  the  soul  being 
the  sum  of  all  the  imponderable  forces,  such  as  gravitation, 
heat,  light,  electricity,  magnetism,  galvanism,  vegetable  and 
animal  life,  and  especially  the  mesmeric  influence,  of  which 
many  of  them  regard  intellect  as  a  modification ;  and  the 
body  being  the  sum  of  all  the  ponderable  substances,  such 
as  air,  water,  earth,  minerals,  vegetables,  and  bodies  of  ani- 

(91) 


92     IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

mals  and  men.  This  creed  is  popularly  expressed  in  the 
sentence  so  often  heard,  *'  God  is  everything,  and  everything 
is  God."  But  this  vast  generalization  of  all  things  into  the 
higher  unity — this  exalting  of  monkeys,  men,  snails,  and 
paving  stones  to  the  same  level  of  divinity  — by  no  means 
meets  the  views  of  the  more  unphilosophical  and  aspiring 
gods  and  goddesses,  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  so  impar- 
tial. To  deify  a  man  and  his  cat  by  the  same  process  is  not 
much  of  a  distinction  to  the  former ;  and  of  what  advantage 
is  it  to  be  made  a  god,  if  he  does  not  thereby  obtain  some 
distinction?  This  leveling  apotheosis  is  generally  confined 
to  the  German  Pantheists ;  their  more  ambitious  American 
brethren  ascribe  the  contented  humility  which  accepts  it 
to  the  continual  influence  of  the  fumes  of  tobacco  and  lager 
beer. 

Man  is  the  great  deity  of  the  other  class.  Renan  boldly 
says :  "  For  myself,  I  believe  there  is  not  in  the  universe  an 
intelligence  superior  to  that  of  man;  the  absolute  of  justice 
and  reason  manifests  itself  only  in  humanity;  regarded  apart 
from  humanity  that  absolute  exists  only  as  an  abstraction. 
The  infinite  exists  only  when  it  clothes  itself  in  form."* 
And  as  the  soul  of  man  is,  rather  inconsistently  for  people 
who  believe  everything  God,  supposed  to  be  superior  to  the 
rest  of  him,  they  go  oflF  into  great  rhapsodies  of  adoration 
of  their  own  souls. 

"  The  doctrine  of  the  soul — first  sotd,  and  second  soul,  and 
evermore  sour'f — is  the  doctrine  which  is  to  regenerate  the 
world.  God,  in  their  view,  is  nothing  till  he  attains  self- 
consciousness  in  man.  "  The  universal  does  not  attract  us 
till  housed  in  the  individual.  Who  heeds  the  waste  abyss 
of  possibility?  Standing  on  the  bare  ground,  my  head 
bathed  by  the  blithe  air,  and  uplifted  into  infinite  space,  all 


*Cited  in  Pressense's  Jest4s  Christy  His  Life  atid  Times.    Page  10. 
tEmerson. 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVEEYBODY  GOD?     93 

mere  egotism  vanishes.  The  currents  of  the  universal  being 
circulate  through  me.  I  am  part  or  particle  of  God."  "I 
stand  here  to  say,  '  Let  us  worship  the  mighty  and  trans- 
cendent soul.'  "  "  God  attains  to  self-consciousness  only  in 
the  human  soul."  "Honor  yourself."  "Reverence  your  own 
individuality."  "The  soul  of  man  is  the  highest  intelli- 
gence in  the  universe."  Such  are  the  dogmas  which,  under 
the  name  of  Philosophy,  are  poured  forth  oracularly,  un- 
supported by  reason  or  argument,  by  the  prophets  of  the 
new  dispensation  — the  last  and  highest  achievement  of  the 
human  intellect. 

It  is  very  unfortunate,  however,  for  the  honor  of  the 
prophets  of  the  nineteenth  century,  that  this  profound  dis- 
covery was  invented,  and  illustrated,  patented,  and  peddled, 
by  the  Hindoos,  among  the  people  of  India,  two  thousand 
years  before  the  divinity  Rad  struggled  into  self  conscious- 
ness in  the  mighty  and  transcendent  souls  of  Schelling, 
Hegel,  and  Strauss,  of  Atkinson,  Parker,  or  Emerson.  We 
mean  to  show  in  this  lecture,  that  it  is  an  Antiquated^  ^i/p- 
ocrltlcal,  Demoralizing  Athnsm. 

1.  Pantheisin  is  an  Antiquated  Ilere&y. — It  has  rotted 
and  putrefied  among  the  worshipers  of  cats,  and  monkeys, 
and  holy  bulls,  and  bits  of  sticks  and  stones,  on  the  banks  of 
the  Ganges,  for  more  than  two  thousand  years ;  yet  it  is  now 
hooked  up  out  of  its  dunghill,  and  hawked  about  among 
Christian  people,  as  a  prime  new  discovery  of  modern  phi- 
losophy for  getting  rid  of  Almighty  God.  As  the  Hindoo 
Shasters  are  undoubtedly  the  sources  from  which  French, 
German,  and  American  philosophers  have  borrowed  their  dog- 
mas, and  as  they  have  not  had  time  to  take  the  whole  system, 
we  shall  edify  the  public  by  a  view  of  this  sublime  theology 
as  exhibited  in  the  writings  of  the  Pantheistic  philosophers 
of  India,  as  follows : 

"  When  existing  in  the  temporary  imperfect  state  of 
Sjgun^  Brahm  (the  Pantheist  deity)  wills  to  manifest  the 


94  IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

universe.  For  this  purpose  he  puts  forth  his  omnipotent 
energy,  which  is  variously  styled  in  the  diflferent  systems 
now  under  review.  He  puts  forth  his  energy  for  what?  For 
the  effecting  of  a  creation  out  of  nothing?  'No/  says  one 
of  the  Shasters,  but  to  '■produce  from  his  own  divine  sub- 
stance a  midtiform  universe.^  By  the  spontaneous  exertion 
of  this  energy  he  sends  forth,  from  his  own  divin*  substance, 
a  countless  host  of  essences,  like  innumerable  sparks  issuing 
from  the  blazing  fire,  or  myriads  of  rays  from  the  resplen- 
dent sun.  These  detached  portions  of  Brahm — these  sepa- 
rated divine  essences — soon  become  individuated  systems, 
destined,  in  time,  to  occupy  different  forms  prepared  for 
their  reception ;  whether  these  be  fixed  or  movable,  animate 
or  inanimate,  forms  of  gods  or  men,  forms  of  animal,  vege- 
table, or  mineral  existences. 

"  Having  been  separated  from  Brahm  in  his  imperfect  state 
of  Sac/un,  they  carry  along  with  them  a  share  of  those  prin- 
ciples, qualities,  and  attributes  that  characterize  that  state, 
though  predominating  in  very  different  degrees  and  propor- 
tions; either  according  to  their  respective  capacities,  or  the 
retributive  awards  of  an  eternal  ordination.  Among  others 
it  is  specially  noted,  that  as  Brahm  at  that  time  had  awak- 
ened into  a  consciousness  of  his  own  existence,  there  does 
inhere  in  each  separated  soul  a  notion,  or  a  conviction,  of 
its  own  distinct,  independent,  individual  existence.  Labor 
ing  under  this  delusive  notion,  or  conviction,  the  soul  has 
lost  the  knowledge  of  its  own  proper  nature — its  divine  or- 
igin, and  ultimate  destiny.  It  ignorantly  regards  itself  as 
an  inferior  entity,  instead  of  knowing  itself  to  be  what  it 
truly  is,  a  consubstantial,  though  it  may  be  an  infinitesi- 
mally  minute  portion  of  the  great  whole,  a  universal  spirit. 

''Each  individual  soul  being  thus  a  portion  of  Brahm, 
even  as  a  spark  is  of  fire,  it  is  again  and  again  declared  that 
the  relation  between  them  is  not  that  of  master  and  servant, 
ruler  and  ruled,  but  that  of  whole  and  part !     The  soul  is 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ?     95 

pronounced  to  be  eternal  a  parte  ante;  in  itself  it  has  had 
no  beginning  or  birth,  though  its  separate  individuality 
originated  in  time.  It  is  eternal  a  parte  post;  it  will  have 
no  end — no  death;  though  its  separate  individuality  will 
terminate  in  time.  Its  manifestation  in  time  is  not  a  crea- 
tion ;  it  is  an  effluence  from  the  eternal  fount  of  spirit.  Its 
disappearance  from  the  stage  of  time  is  not  an  extinction  of 
essence — a  reduction  to  nonentity;  it  is  only  a  refluence  into 
its  original  source.  As  an  emanation  from  the  supreme, 
eternal  spirit,  it  is  from  everlasting  to  everlasting.  Neither 
can  it  be  said  to  be  of  finite  dimensions ;  on  the  contrary, 
says  the  sacred  oracle,  '  being  identified  with  the  Supreme 
Brahm,  it  participates  in  his  infinity.' 

"After  having  enumerated  all  the  elementary  principles, 
atoms,  and  qualities  successively  evolved  from  Brahm,  one 
of  the  sacred  writings  states,  that  though  each  of  these  had 
distinct  powers,  yet  they  existed  separate  and  disunited, 
without  order  or  harmonious  adaptation  of  parts ;  that  until 
they  were  duly  combined  together,  it  was  impossible  to  pro- 
duce this  universe,  or  animated  beings ;  and  that  therefore 
it  was  requisite  to  adopt  other  means  than  fortuitous  chance 
for  giving  them  an  appropriate  combination,  and  symmetri- 
cal arrangement.  The  Supreme,  accordingly,  produced  an 
egg,  in  which  the  elementary  principles  might  be  deposited, 
and  nurtured  into  maturity."  "All  the  primary  atoms, 
qualities,  and  principles — the  seeds  of  future  worlds— that 
had  been  evolved  from  the  substance  of  Brahm,  were  now 
collected  together,  and  deposited  in  the  newly  produced  egg. 
And  into  it,  along  with  them,  entered  the  self-existent  him- 
self, under  the  assumed  form  of  Brahm ;  and  then  he  sat 
vivifying,  expanding,  and  combining  the  elements,  a  whole 
year  of  the  creation,  or  four  thousand  three  hundred  mil- 
lions of  solar  years !  During  this  amazing  period,  the  won- 
drous egg  floated  like  a  bubble  on  the  abyss  of  primeval 
waters,  increasing  in  size,  and  blazing  refulgent  as  a  thousand 


96     IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 


suns.  At  lengtli  the  Supreme,  who  dwelt  therein,  burst  the 
shell  of  the  stupendous  egg,  and  issued  forth  under  a  new 
form,  with  a  thousand  heads,  a  thousand  eyes,  and  a  thou- 
sand arms.  Along  with  him  there  issued  forth  another 
form,  huge  and  measureless.  What  could  that  be?  All  the 
elementary  principles  having  now  been  matured,  and  disposed 
into  an  endless  variety  of  orderly  collocations,  and  combined 
into  one  harmonious  whole,  they  darted  into  visible  mani- 
festation under  the  form  of  the  present  glorious  universe ! 
A  universe  now  finished,  and  ready  made,  with  its  entire 
apparatus,  of  earth,  sun,  moon,  and  stars.  What,  then,  is 
this  multiform  universe  ?  It  is  but  a  harmoniously  arranged 
expansion  of  primordial  principles  and  qualities.  And 
whence  are  these  ?  Educed  or  evolved  from  the  divine  sub- 
stance of  Brahm.  Hence  it  is  that  the  universe  is  so  con- 
stantly spoken  of,  even  by  mythologists,  as  a  manifested 
form  of  Brahm  himself,  the  supreme,  invisible  spirit.  Hence, 
too,  under  the  notion  that  it  is  the  manifestation  of  a  being 
who  may  assume  every  variety  of  corporeal  form,  is  the  uni- 
verse often  personified,  or  described  as  if  its  different  parts 
were  only  the  different  members  of  a  person,  of  prodigious 
magnitude,  in  human  form.  It  is  declared  that  the  hairs  of 
his  body  are  the  trees  of  the  forest;  of  his  head,  the  clouds; 
of  his  beard,  the  lightning.  His  breath  is  the  circling  at- 
mosphere; his  voice,  the  thunder;  his  eyes,  the  sun  and 
moon ;  his  veins,  the  rivers ;  his  nails,  the  rocks ;  his  bones, 
the'  lofty  mountains  !* 

''The  substantial  fabrics  of  all  worlds  having  now  been 
framed  and  fitted  up  as  the  destined  abodes  of  different  or- 
ders of  being,  celestial,  terrestrial,  and  infernal,  the  question 
next  arises.  How  or  by  whom  were  produced  the  various  or- 
ganized forms  which  these  orders  of  being  were  designed  to 
animate?     Though  hosts  of  subtle  essences  or  souls  flowed 

*  Duff's  India,  pages  99-114. 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD?     97 

forth  from  Brahm,  all  of  these  remain  inactive  till  united  to 
some  form  of  materialism.  From  this  necessity  the  gods 
themselves  are  not  exempted.  While  the  souls  of  men,  and 
other  inferior  spirits,  must  be  encased  in  tabernacles  fash- 
ioned out  of  the  grosser  elements,  the  souls  of  the  gods, 
and  all  other  superior  spirits,  must  be  made  to  inhabit  ma- 
terial forms,  composed  of  one  or  other  of  the  infinitely  at- 
tenuated and  invisible  rudimental  atoms  that  spring  direct 
from  the  principle  of  consciousness. 

"Interminable  as  are  the  incoherencies,  inconsistencies, 
and  extravagancies  of  the  Hindoo  sacred  writings,  on  no 
subject,  perhaps,  is  the  multiplicity  of  varying  accounts  and 
discrepancies  more  astonishing  than  on  the  present.  Vol 
umes  could  not  sufiice  to  retail  them  all.  Brahma's  first 
attempts  at  the  production  of  the  forms  of  animated  beings 
were  as  eminently  unsuccessful  as  they  were  various.  At 
one  time  he  is  said  to  have  performed  a  long  and  severe 
course  of  ascetic  devotions,  to  enable  him  to  accomplish  his 
wish;  but  in  vain;  at  another,  inflamed  by  anger  and  pas- 
sion at  his  repeated  failures,  he  sat  down  and  wept;  and 
from  the  streaming  tear  drops  sprang  into  being,  as  his  first 
boon,  a  progeny  of  ghosts  and  goblins,  of  an  aspect  so  loath- 
some and  dreadful,  that  he  was  ready  to  faint  away.  At  one 
time,  after  profound  meditation,  different  beings  spring 
forth :  one  from  his  thumb,  another  from  his  breath,  a  third 
from  his  ear,  a  fourth  from  his  side.  But  enough  of  such 
monstrous  legends."* 

There  now,  reader,  you  have  the  original  of  the  Develop- 
ment Theory,  with  Vestiges  of  Creation  enough  to  make 
half  a  dozen  new  infidel  cosmogonies,  besides  the  genuine 
original  of  Pantheism,  from  its  native  soil.  Our  western 
Pantheists  will  doubtless  reverence  their  venerable  progeni- 
tors;  and,  should  the  remainder  of  the  family  find  their 

*Dufi's  India,  page  119. 


98     IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

way  here  in  a  year  or  two,  via  Germany,  the  public  will  be 
better  prepared  to  give  a  fitting  reception  to  such  distin- 
guished visitors,  including  their  suite  of  divine  bulls  and 
holy  monkeys,  their  lustrations  of  cow  dung,  ecstatic  hook 
swingings,  burning  of  widows,  and  drowning  of  children, 
and  other  Pantheistic  Philosophies,  from  the  banks  of  the 
Ganges.  What  an  outrage  of  decency  for  such  men  to  call 
themselves  philosophers  and  Christians ! 

The  relationship  of  American  Pantheism  with  that  of 
India  is  unblushingly  acknowledged  by  the  recent  Pantheis- 
tic writers:  "When  ancient  sages  came  to  believe  in  the 
absolute  goodness,  justice,  love,  and  wisdom  of  the  deity, 
or  providence,  they  fell  into  that  peace  which  needed  noth- 
ing, feared  nothing,  and  therefore  worshiped  nothing.  Noth- 
ing to  blame,  nothing  to  praise ;  the  perfect  whole  became 
one  great  divinity.  It  was  so  in  Magadha  and  Benares ;  it 
is  so  in  Concord  and  Boston."* 

2.  Pantheism  is  a  System  of  Deception  and  Hypocrisy. — 
Has  any  man  a  right  to  pervert  the  English  language,  by 
fixing  new  meanings  to  words,  entirely  different  from  and 
contrary  to  those  in  common  use?  If  he  knows  the  mean- 
ing of  the  words  he  uses,  and  uses  them  to  convey  a  con- 
trary meaning,  he  is  a  deceiver.  The  name  God,  used  as  a 
proper  name,  in  the  English  tongue,  means  "the  Supreme 
Being;  Jehovah;  the  Eternal  and  Infinite  Spirit,  the  Crea- 
tor and  Sovereign  of  the  Universe. "f  If,  then,  a  man  says 
he  believes  in  God,  but  when  forced  to  explain  what  he 
means  by  that  name,  says  he  means  steam,  heat,  electricity, 
galvanism,  magnetism,  mesmeric  force,  odyle,  animal  life, 
the  soul  of  man,  or  the  sum  of  all  the  intelligences  in  the 
universe,  he  is  a  deceiver,  and  vain  talker,  abusing  language 
to  conceal   his   impiety.      Pantheism  is   simply  Jesuitical 

*Man'8  Origin  and  Destiny,  293. 
tWebstcr's  Dictionary. 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ?     99 

Atheism.  Willing  to  dethrone  Jehovah,  but  unable  and 
unwilling  to  place  any  other  being  in  his  stead,  as  Creator 
and  Ruler  of  the  universe,  yet  conscious  that  mankind  will 
never  embrace  open  Atheism,  Pantheists  profess  to  believe 
in  God,  only  that  they  may  steal  his  name  to  cloak  their 
Atheism.  We,  in  common  with  all  who  believe  in  God, 
demand,  that,  as  their  divinity  is,  by  their  own  confession, 
essentially  different  from  God,  they  shall  use  a  different 
word  to  describe  it.  Let  them  call  it  Brahm,  as  their  breth- 
ren in  India  do,  or  any  other  name  not  appropriated  to  any 
existing  being  in  heaven  or  earth,  or  under  the  earth;  and 
let  them  cease  to  profane  religion,  and  insult  common  sense, 
by  affixing  the  holy  name  of  the  Supreme  to  their  thousand- 
headed  monster. 

But  the  very  perfection  of  Jesuitism  is  reached,  when 
Pantheists  profess  their  high  respect  for  the  Christian  relig- 
ion. They  do  not  generally  speak  of  it  as  a  superstition, 
though  some  of  the  vulgar  sort  do ;  nor  do  they  decry  its 
mysteries,  as  Deists  are  in  the  habit  of  doing;  nor,  as  So- 
cinians,  and  Unitarians,  and  Rationalists,  do  they  attempt  to 
reduce  it  to  a  mere  code  of  morals.  They  grant  it  to  be 
the  highest  development  of  humanity  yet  reached  by  the 
majority  of  the  human  race.  The  brute,  the  savage,  the 
polytheistic  idolater,  the  star  worshiper,  the  monotheist, 
the  Christian,  are  all,  in  their  scheme,  so  many  successive 
developments  of  humanity  in  its  upward  progress.  There 
is  only  one  step  higher  than  Christianity,  and  that  is  Pan- 
theism. Well  knowing  that  Christianity  is  diametrically 
opposed  to  their  falsehoods,  and  that  the  Bible,  everywhere, 
teaches  that  the  natural  progress  of  man  has  ever  been  down 
from  a  state  of  holiness  to  idolatry  and  barbarism,  they 
have  yet  the  hardihood  to  profess  respect  for  it,  as  a  system 
of  concealed  Pantheism,  and  to  clothe  their  abominations  in 
Scripture  language.  They  speak,  for  instance,  of  the 
"beauty  of  holiness   in   the   mind,   that   has   surmounted 


100    IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

every  idea  of  a  personal  God;"  and  of  "God  dwelling  in 
us,  and  his  love  perfected  in  us,"  when  they  believe  that  he 
dwells  as  really  in  every  creature :  in  that  hog,  for  instance. 
Then  they  will  readily  acknowledge  that  the  Bible  is  in- 
spired. They  can  arce/)<— that  is  the  phrase — they  can  ac- 
cept the  Book  which  denounces  death  upon  those  fools  who, 
"professing  themselves  to  be  wise,  change  the  truth  of  God 
into  a  lie,  and  worship  and  serve  the  creature  more  than  the 
Creator,"  as  merely  a  mystic  revelation  of  the  Pantheism 
which  leaves  man  to  "  erect  everything  into  a  God,  provided 
it  is  none:  sun,  moon,  stars,  a  cat,  a  monkey,  an  onion,  un- 
couth idols,  sculptured  marble;  nay,  a  shapeless  trunk, 
which  the  devout  impatience  of  the  idolater  does  not  stay 
to  fashion  into  the  likeness  of  a  man,  but  gives  its  apotheo- 
sis at  once."  Oh,  yes;  they  accept  the  Bible  as  inspired  — 
a  God  inspired  Book— inasmuch  as  every  product  of  the 
human  mind  is  a  development  of  Deity.  The  Bible,  then, 
when  we  have  the  matter  fully  explained,  is  quite  on  a  level 
with  Gulliver's  Travels,  or  Emerson's  Address  to  a  Senior 
Class  of  Divinity. 

There  is  nothing,  however,  in  this  vast  system  of  mon- 
strosities, which  fills  the  soul  of  a  Christian  with  such  loath- 
ing and  detestation,  as  to  hear  Pantheists  profess  their  ven- 
eration for  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  claim  him  as  a  teacher  of 
Pantheism.  If  there  is  one  object  which  they  detest  with 
all  their  hearts,  it  is  the  Judge  of  the  quick  and  dead,  and 
the  vengeance  which  he  shall  take  upon  them  that  know  not 
God,  and  obey  not  the  gospel.  Any  allusion  to  the  judg- 
ment seat  of  Christ  fills  them  with  fury,  and  causes  them 
to  pour  forth  awful  blasphemies.  They  know  that  the  Lord 
Jesus  repeatedly  declared  himself  the  Judge  of  the  living 
and  the  dead — that  "the  hour  is  coming  in  which  all  that 
are  in  their  graves  shall  hear  his  voice,  and  shall  come  forth : 
they  that  have  done  good,  unto  the  resurrection  of  life,  and 
they  that  have  done  evil,  unto  the  resurrection  of  damna- 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD?  101 

tion;"  and  that  the  very  last  sentence  of  his  public  dis- 
courses is,  "And  these  "  ^  the  wicked)  "  shall  go  away  into  ever- 
lasting punishment;  but  the  righteous  into  life  eternal." 
When  they  drop  the  mask  for  a  moment,  they  can  accuse 
apostles  and  disciples  with  "  dwelling  with  noxious  exagger- 
ation about  the  person  of  Christ. "-i^  Christ,  as  revealed  in 
the  gospel,  they  hate  with  a  perfect  hatred.  But  when  it 
becomes  necessary  to  address  Christians,  and  beguile  them 
into  the  deceitfulness  of  Pantheism,  the  tune  is  changed. 
Christ  becomes  the  model  man — ''one  conceived  in  "condi- 
tions favorable  to  the  highest  perfectibility  of  the  individual 
consciousness;  and  so  possessed  of  powers  of  generalization 
far  in  advance  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  They  can 
listen  to  and  honor  one  of  the  best  expounders  of  God  and 
nature  in  the  Man  of  Nazareth. "f  The  vilest  falsehoods  of 
Pantheism  are  ascribed  to  Jesus,  that  those  who,  ignorant 
of  his  doctrine,  yet  respect  his  name,  may  be  seduced  to 
receive  them.  Of  him  who  declared,  "  Out  of  the  heart  of 
man  proceed  evil  thoughts,  murders,  adulteries,  thefts,  false 
witness,  blasphemies,"  they  have  the  hardihood  to  declare, 
"  He  saw  with  open  eyes  the  mystery  of  the  soul ;  alone,  in 
all  history,  he  estimated  the  greatness  of  man."  Calculat- 
ing upon  that  ignorance  of  the  teaching  of  Christ  which  is 
so  general  among^ their  audiences,  they  dare  to  represent  the 
only  begotten  Son  of  God  as  teaching  Pantheism:  "One 
man  was  true  to  what  is  in  you  and  me ;  he  saw  that  God 
incarnates  himself  in  man,  and  evermore  goes  forth  anew  to 
take  possessson  of  his  world.  He  said  in  this  jubilee  of 
sublime  emotion,  'I  am  divine.  Through  me  God  acts; 
through  me,  speaks.  Would  you  see  God,  see  me ;  or  see 
thee  when  thou  also  thinkest  as  I  now  think.'     Because  the 


♦Emerson's  Address  to  a  Senior  Class  in  Divinity. 

tHennell's  Christian  Theism,  which  shows  how  Theists  of  every 
nation — Christian,  Jew,  Mohammedan,  or  Chinese— can  meet  upon 
common  ground. 


102    IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

indwelling  Supreme  Spirit  can  not  wholly  be  got  rid  of,  the 
doctrine  of  it  suffers  this  perversion,  that  the  divine  nature 
is  attributed  to  one  or  two  persons,  and  denied  to  all  the 
rest,  and  denied  with  fury."  Yes,  truly,  the  divine  nature 
is  emphatically  denied  to  all  unregcnerated  men,  and  denied, 
too,  by  that  divine  teacher  thus  eulogized.  Hear  him:  "Ye 
do  the  deeds  of  your  father.  Then  said  they  to  him.  We 
be  not  born  of  fornication ;  we  have  one  Father,  even  God. 
Jesus  said  unto  them.  If  God  were  your  Father,  ye  would 
love  me ;  for  I  proceeded  forth  and  came  from  God ;  neither 
came  I  of  myself,  but  he  sent  me.  Why  do  ye  not  under- 
stand my  speech?  Even  because  ye  can  not  hear  my  word. 
Ye  are  of  your  father,  the  devil ;  and  the  works  of  your 
father  ye  will  do.  He  was  a  murderer  from  the  beginning, 
and  abode  not  in  the  truth,  because  there  is  no  truth  in 
him.  When  he  speaketh  a  lie,  he  speaketh  it  of  his  own; 
for  he  is  a  liar,  and  the  father  of  it." 

Let  Pantheists,  then,  cease  to  wind  their  serpent  coils 
around  Christianity,  and  to  defile  the  Bible  with  their  filthy 
lickings.  The  Lord  Jesus  will  not  suffer  such  persons  to 
bear  even  a  true  testimony  to  him,  and  his  followers  will  not 
permit  them  to  ascribe  their  falsehoods  to  him,  without  re- 
proof. Let  them  stand  out  and  avow  themselves  the  ene- 
mies of  Christ  and  his  gospel,  as  they  are,  and  cease  their 
abominable  pretenses  of  giving  to  the  world  the  ultimate 
development  of  Christianity.  What  concord  hath  Christ 
with  Belial? 

3.  Pantheism  is  a  System  of  Immorality. — It  loosens  all 
the  sanctions  of  moral  law.  If  there  is  anything  upon  which 
all  Pantheists  are  agreed,  it  is  in  the  denial  of  the  resur- 
rection, the  judgment,  and  the  future  punishment  of  the 
wicked.  Their  whole  system,  in  all  its  range,  from  Spirit- 
ualism to  Phrenology,  is  expressly  invented  to  get  rid  of 
God's  moral  government.  If  man  is  the  highest  intelli- 
gence in  the  universe,  to  whom  should  he  render  an  account 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ?  103 


of  his  conduct?  Or  who  would  have  any  right  to  call  him 
to  account?  Then,  if  we  are  developments  of  deity,  deity 
can  not  offend  against  itself.  Further,  if  our  development, 
both  of  body  and  mind,  be  the  inevitable  result  of  the  laws 
of  nature — of  our  organization  and  our  position — man  is 
but  the  creature  of  circumstances,  and,  therefore,  as  is 
abundantly  argued,  can  not  be  made  responsible  for  laws  and 
their  results,  over  which  he  has  no  control.  "  I  am  what  I 
am.  I  can  not  alter  my  will,  or  be  other  than  what  I  am, 
and  can  not  deserve  either  reward  or  punishment."'^  Before 
hundreds  of  the  citizens  of  Cincinnati,  a  lecturer  publicly 
denied  the  riorht  of  either  God  or  man  to  invade  his  indi- 

o 

viduality,  by  taking  vengeance  upon  him  for  any  crime 
whatever.  Thousands,  who  are  not  yet  Pantheists,  are  §o 
far  infected  with  the  poison  that  they  utterly  deny  any 
right  of  vindictive  punishment  to  God  or  man. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Again  and  again  have  we  listened 
with  astonishment  to  men,  declaring  that  there  was  no  moral 
law — no  standard  of  right  and  wrong,  but  the  will  of  the 
community.  Of  course  it  was  quite  natural,  after  such  a 
declaration,  to  assert  that  a  wife  who  should  remain  with  a 
husband  of  inferior  intellectuality,  or  unsuitable  emotions, 
was  committing  adultery;  that  private  property  is  a  legal- 
ized robbery;  and  that  when  a  citizen  becomes  mentally  or 
physically  unfit  for  the  business  of  life,  he  confers  the  high- 
est obligation  on  society,  and  performs  the  highest  duty  to 
himself,  by  committing  suicide,  and  thus  returning  to  the 
great  ocean  of  being ! 

We  might  think  that  confusion  of  right  and  wrong  could 
not  be  worse  confounded  than  this;  yet  there  is  a  blacker 
darkness  still.  The  distinction  between  good  and  evil  is  ah- 
solutely  denied.  The  Hindoo  Pantheists  declare  that  they 
can  not  sin,  because  they  are  God,  and  God  can  not  offend 


♦Atkinson's  Letters,  page  190. 


104    IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

against  himself;  there  is  no  sin — it  is  all  maya — delusion. 
So  the  American  and  English  school  tells  us  it  lives  only  in 
the  obsolete  theology.  Evil,  we  are  told,  "  is  good  in  an- 
other way  we  are  not  skilled  in."*  So  says  the  author  of 
"Representative  Men."  " Evil,"  according  to  old  philoso- 
phers, "  is  good  in  the  making ;  that  pure  malignity  can  ex- 
ist is  the  extreme  proposition  of  unbelief.  It  is  not  to  be 
entertained  by  a  rational  agent.  It  is  Atheism ;  it  is  the 
last  profanation."  "  The  divine  effort  is  never  relaxed ;  the 
carrion  in  the  sun  will  convert  itself  into  grass  and  flow- 
ers; and  man,  though  in  brothels,  or  jails,  or  on  gibbets,  is 
on  his  way  to  all  that  is  good  and  true."t 

Emerson,  in  a  lecture  in  Cincinnati,  is  reported  by  the 
editor  of  The  Central  Herald^  as  saying  in  his  hearing:  "  To 
say  that  the  majority  of  men  are  wicked,  is  only  to  say  that 
they  are  young."  "Everyman  is  indebted  to  his  vices — • 
virtues  grow  out  of  them  as  a  thrifty  and  fruitful  plant 
grows  out  of  manure."  "There  is  hope  even  for  the  rep- 
robate, and  the  ruffian,  in  the  fullness  of  time." 

If  these  were  only  the  ravings  of  lunatics,  or  the  dream- 
ings  of  philosophers,  we  should  never  have  hunted  them 
from  their  hiding-places  to  scare  your  visions;  but  these 
doctrines  are  weekly  propounded  in  your  own  city,  and 
throughout  our  land,  from  platform  and  press,  to  thousands 
of  your  children  and  their  school-teachers,  of  your  work, 
men  and  your  lawgivers,  to  your  wives  and  daughters.  Again 
and  again  have  our  ears'  been  confounded  in  the  squares  of 
New  York,  and  the  streets  of  Philadelphia,  and  the  market- 
places of  Cincinnati,  by  the  boisterous  cry.  What  is  sinf 
There  is  no  sin.  It  is  all  an  old  story.  Let  men  who  fear 
no  God,  but  who  have  lives,  and  wives,  and  property  to  lose, 
look  to  it,  and  say  if  they  act  wisely  in  giving  their  influ- 
ence to  a  system  which  lands  in  such  consequences.     Let 

*  Festus,  page  48. 

t  Swedenborg,  or  the  Mystic  (quoted  by  Pierson,  41),  p.  68. 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD?    105 

tliera  devise  some  religion  for  the  people  whicli  will  preserve 
the  rights  of  man,  while  giving  license  to  trample  upon  the 
rights  of  God ;  or,  failing  in  the  effort,  let  them  acknowledge 
that  the  enemy  of  God  is,  and  of  necessity  must  be,  the 
foe  of  all  that  constitutes  the  happiness  of  man.  Impiety 
and  immorality  are  wedded  in  heaven's  decree,  and  man  can 
not  sunder  them. 

4.  Pantheism  is  Virtually  Atheism. — It  may  scarce  seem 
needful  to  multiply  proofs  on  this  head.  How  can  any  one 
imagine  a  being  composed  of  the  sum  of  all  the  intelligences 
of  the  universe?  Such  a  thing,  or  combination  of  things, 
never  was  distinctly  conceived  of  by  any  intelligent  being. 
Can  intelligences  be  compounded,  or  like  bricks  and  mortar, 
piled  upon  each  other?  If  they  could,  did  these  finite  in- 
telligences create  themselves?  If  the  soul  of  man  is  the 
highest  intelligence  in  the  universe,  did  the  soul  of  man* 
create,  or  does  the  soul  of  man  govern  it?  Shall  we  adore 
his  soul?  Some  Pantheists  have  got  just  to  this  length.  M. 
Comte  declares,  that  "At  this  present  time,  for  minds  prop- 
erly familiarized  with  true  astronomical  philosophy,  the 
heavens  display  no  other  glory  than  that  of  Hipparchus,  or 
Kepler,  or  Newton,  and  of  all  who  have  helped  to  establish 
these  laws."  Establish  these  laws!  Laws  by  which  the 
heavenly  bodies  were  guided  thousands  of  years  before  Kep- 
ler or  Newton  were  born.  Shall  we  then  adore  the  souls  of 
Kepler  and  Newton?  M.  Comte  has  invented  a  religion, 
which  he  is  much  displeased  that  the  admirers  of  his  Posi- 
tive Philosophy  will  not  accept,  in  which  the  children  are 
to  be  taught  to  worship  idols,  the  youth  to  believe  in  one 
God,  if  they  can,  after  such  a  training  in  infancy,  and  the 
full-grown  men  are  to  adore  a  Grand  Etre,  "the  continuous 
resultant  of  all  the  forces  capable  of  voluntarily  concurring 
in  the  universal  perfectioning  of  the  world,  not  forgetting  our 
worthy  auxiliaries,  the  animals^^*^     Our  Anglo-Saxon  Pan- 

*  Politique  Positive,  Vol.  II.  page  60. 


108    IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD? 

theists,  however,  are  not  quite  philosophical  enough  yet  to 
adore  the  mules  and  oxen,  and  therefore  refuse  worship  al- 
together. "  Work  is  worship,"  constitutes  their  liturgy. 
"As  soon  as  the  man  is  as  one  with  God,  he  will  not  beg. 
He  will  then  see  prayer  in  all  action."*  "Labor  wide  as 
earth  has  its  summit  in  heaven.  Sweat  of  the  brow,  and  up 
from  that  to  sweat  of  the  brain,  sweat  of  the  heart ;  which 
includes  all  Kepler  calculations,  Newton  meditations,  all 
sciences,  all  spoken  epics,  all  acted  heroisms,  martyrdoms, 
up  to  that  agony  of  bloody  sweat,  which  all  men  have  ac- 
counted divine !  Oh,  brother,  if  this  is  not  worship,  then 
I  say,  the  more  pity  for  worship;  for  this  is  the  noblest 
thing  yet  discovered  under  God's  sky."  "No  man  has 
worked,  or  can  work,  except  religiously. "f  "Adieu,  0 
Church!  Thy  road  is  that  way,  mine  is  this.  In  God's 
name,  adieu!  "J 

Such  is  the  theory.  How  faithfully  acted  out,  you  can 
learn  from  the  thousands  who  are  now,  publicly,  upon  God's 
holy  Sabbath,  working  religiously  upon  the  bridge  that  is  to 
span  the  river,  or  less  ostentatiously  in  their  shops  and  work- 
rooms throughout  the  city.  Within  a  circle  of  three  miles' 
radius  of  the  spot  you  now  occupy,  one  hundred  thousand 
intelligent  beings  in  this  Christian  city  worship  no  God. 

The  abstraction,  which  the  Pantheist  calls  God,  is  no  ob- 
ject of  worship.  It  is  not  to  be  loved.  If  it  does  good,  it 
could  not  help  it,  and  did  not  intend  it.  It  is  not  to  be 
thanked  for  benefits.  It,  the  sum  of  all  the  intelligence  of 
the  universe,  can  not  be  collected  from  the  seven  spheres  to 
receive  any  such  acknowledgment.  It  can  not  deviate  from 
its  fated  course  of  proceeding ;  therefore,  says  the  Pantheist, 
why  should  I  pray?  It  neither  sees  his  conduct,  nor  cares 
for  it;  and  he  denies  any  right  to  call  him  to  account.  It 
did  not  create  him,  does  not  govern  him,  will  not  judge  him, 

*  Emerson,  t  Carlyle— Past  and  Present.  J  Carlyle-Life  of 
Sterling. 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD?    107 

can  not  punish  him.  It  is  no  object  of  love,  fear,  worship, 
or  obedience.  It  is  no  god.  He  is  an  Atheist.  He  believes 
not  in  any  Grod. 

Hear,  O  Israel!  the  Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord. 
He  is  distinct  from,  and  supreme  over  all  his  works.  He 
now  rules,  and  will  hereafter  judge-all  intelligent  creatures, 
and  will  render  to  every  one  according  to  his  works. 

1.  Reason  declares  it.  The  world  did  not  make  itself. 
The  soul  of  man  did  not  make  itself  The  body  of  man  did 
not  make  itself  They  must  have  had  an  intelligent  Crea- 
tor, who  is  God.  God  is  known  by  his  works  to  be  distinct 
from  them,  and  superior  to  them.  The  work  is  not  the 
workman.  The  house  is  not  the  builder.  The  watch  is  not 
the  watchmaker.  The  sum  of  all  the  works  of  any  worker 
is  not  the  agent  who  produced  them.  Let  an  architect 
s^end  his  life  in  building  a  city,  yet  the  city  is  not  the 
builder.  The  maker  is  always  distinct  from,  and  superior 
to,  the  thing  made.  You  and  I,  and  the  universe,  are  made. 
Our  Maker,  then,  is  distinct  from,  and  superior  to  us.  One 
plan  gives  order  to  the  universe ;  therefore,  one  mind  orig- 
inated it.     The  Creator  is  over  all  his  creatures. 

2.  Our  consciousness  confirms  it.  If  a  blind  god  could 
not  make  a  seeing  man,  a  god  destitute  of  the  principle  of 
self-consciousness  (if  such  an  abuse  of  language  may  be 
tolerated  for  a  moment)  could  not  impart  to  man  the  con- 
viction, /  am — the  ineradicable  belief  that  I  am  not  the 
world,  nor  any  other  person;  much  less,  everybody;  but 
that  I  am  a  person,  possessed  of  powers  of  knowing,  think- 
ing, liking  and  disliking,  judging,  approving  of  right,  and 
disapproving  of  wrong,  and  choosing  and  willing  my  con- 
duct. My  Maker  has  at  least  as  much  common  sense  as  he 
has  given  me.  He  that  teacheth  man  knowledge,  shalfhe 
not  know? 

3.  Our  ignorance  and  weakness  demand  a  Governor  of  the 
world  wiser  than  ourselves.   The  soul  of  man  is  not  the  high- 


108    IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD  ? 

est  intelligence  in  the  universe.  It  can  not  know  tlie  mode 
of  its  own  operation  on  the  body  it  inhabits,  much  less  the 
plan  of  the  world's  management.  Man  may  know  much 
about  what  does  not  concern  him,  and  about  things  over 
which  he  has  no  control;  but  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  his 
pride  should  feel  the  curb  of  ignorance  and  impotence  where 
his  dearest  interests  are  concerned,  that  so  he  may  be  com- 
pelled to  acknowledge  that  Grod  is  greater  than  man.  He 
may  be  able  to  tell  the  place  of  the  distant  planets  a  thou- 
sand years  hence,  but  he  can  not  tell  where  himself  shall 
be  next  year.  He  can  calculate  for  years  to  come  the  mo- 
tions of  the  tides,  which  he  can  not  control,  but  can  not  tell 
how  his  own  pulse  shall  beat,  or  whether  it  shall  beat  at  all, 
to-morrow.  Ever  as  his  knowledge  of  the  laws  by  which 
Grod  governs  the  world  increases,  his  conviction  of  his  im- 
potence grows ;  and  he  sees  and  feels  that  a  wiser  head  and 
stronger  hand  than  that  of  any  creature,  planned  and  ad- 
ministered them.  Ever  as  he  reaches  some  ultimate  truth, 
such  as  the  mystery  of  electricity,  of  light,  of  life,  of  grav- 
itation, which  he  can  not  explain,  and  beyond  which  he  can 
not  penetrate,  he  hears  the  voice  of  Grod  therein,  demand- 
ing him  to  acknowledge  his  impotence. 

"Where  is  the  way  where  light  dwelleth, 

"And  as  for  darkness,  what  is  the  place  thereof? 

"  Canst  thou  bind  the  sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades, 

"Or  loose  the  bands  of  Orion? 

"Canst  thou  bring  forth  Mazzaroth  in  his  seasons? 

"Or  canst  thou  guide  Arcturus,  with  his  sons? 

"Knowest  thou  the  .ordinances  of  heaven? 

"Canst  thou  set  the  dominion  thereof  in  the  earth? 

a  Canst  thou  lift  up  thy  voice  to  the  clouds, 

"That  abundance  of  waters  may  cover  thee? 

"  Canst  thou  send  lightnings,  that  they  may  go 

"And  say  unto  thee,  *  Here  we  are  ? '  " 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD?    109 

4.  Our  consciences  convince  us  that  God  is  a  Moral  Gov- 
ernor. The  distinction  between  brutes  ^ndmen  is,  that  man 
has  a  sense  of  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong.  If 
we  find  a  tribe  of  savages,  or  individuals  who  indulge  their 
appetites  without  rule,  and  who  do  wrong  without  any  ap- 
parent remorse  or  shame,  we  designate  them  brutes.  Even 
those  who  in  words  deny  any  difference  between  right  and 
wrong,  do  in  fact  admit  its  existence,  by  their  attempts  to 
justify  that  opinion.  Though  weaker,  or  less  regarded  in 
some  than,  in  others,  every  man  is  conscious  of  a  faculty  in 
himself  which  sits  in  judgment  on  his  own  conduct,  and 
that  of  others,  approving  or  condemning  it  as  right  or 
wrong.  In  all  lands,  and  in  all  ages,  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  has  acknowledged  the  existence  and  moral  author- 
ity of  conscience,  as  distinct  from  and  superior  to  mere  in- 
tellect. No  language  of  man  is  destitute  of  words  convey- 
ing the  ideas  of  virtue  and  vice,  of  goodness  and  wickedness. 
When  one  attempts  to  deceive  you  by  a  willful  lie,  you  are 
sensible  not  only  of  an  intellectual  process  of  reason  detect- 
ing the  error,  but  of  a  distinct  judgment  of  disapprobation 
of  the  crime.  When  one  who  has  received  kindness  from 
a  benefactor,  neglects  to  make  any  acknowledgment  of  it, 
cherishes  no  feelings  of  gratitude,  and  insults  and  abuses  the 
friend  who  succored  him,  we  are  conscious,  not  merely  of  the 
facts,  as  phenomena  to  be  observed,  but  of  the  ingratitude, 
as  a  crime  to  be  detested.  And  we  are  irresistibly  constrained 
to  believe  that  he  who  taught  us  this  knowledge  of  a  differ- 
ence between  right  and  wrong,  does  himself  know  such  a 
distinction ;  and  that  he  who  implanted  this  feeling  of  ap- 
proval of  right,  and  condemnation  of  wrong,  in  us,  does  him- 
self approve  the  right,  and  condemn  the  wrong.  And  as 
we  can  form  no  notion  of  right  or  wrong  unconnected  with 
the  idea  that  approbation  of  right  conduct  should  be  suit- 
ably expressed,  and  that  disapprobation  of  wrong  conduct 
ought  also  to  be  suitably  expressed  —in  other  words,  that 


110    IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD? 

right  ought  to  be  rewarded,  and  wrong  ought  to  be  punished 
— so  we  are  constrained  to  trace  such  a  connection  from  our 
minds  to  the  mind  of  him  who  framed  them.  This  convic- 
tion is  God's  law,  written  in  our  hearts.  When  we  do 
wrong,  we  become  conscious  of  a  feeling  of  remorse  in  our 
consciences,  as  truly  as  the  eye  becomes  conscious  of  the 
darkness.  We  may  blind  the  eye,  and  we  may  sear  the  con- 
science, that  the  one  shall  not  see,  nor  the  other  feel ;  but 
light  and  darkness,  right  and  wrong,  will  exist.  The  awful 
fact  which  conscience  reveals  to  us,  that  we  sin  against  God, 
that  we  know  the  right,  and  do  the  wrong,  and  are  conscious 
of  it,  and  of  God's  disapprobation  of  it,  is  conclusive  proof 
that  we  are  not  only  distinct  from  God,  but  separate  from 
him — that  we  oppose  our  wills  against  his.  And  every  pang 
of  remorse  is  a  premonition  of  God's  judgment,  and  every 
sorrow  and  suffering  which  the  Governor  of  the  world  has 
connected  with  sin— as  the  drunkard's  loss  of  character  and 
property,  of  peace  and  happiness,  the  frenzy  of  his  soul,  and 
the  destruction  of  his  body — is  a  type  and  teaching  of  the 
curse  which  he  has  denounced  against  sin. 

5.  The  World's  History  is  the  record  of  marts  crimes,  and 
God's  punishments.  Once  God  swept  the  human  race  from 
earth  with  a  flood  of  water,  because  the  wickedness  of  man 
was  great  on  the  earth.  Again,  he  testified  his  displeasure 
against  the  ungodly  sinners  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  by 
consuming  their  cities  with  fire  from  heaven,  and  leaving  the 
Dead  Sea  to  roll  its  solemn  waves  of  warning  to  all  ungodly 
sinners,  to  the  end  of  time. 

By  the  ordinary  course  of  his  providence,  he  has  ever  se- 
cured the  destruction  of  ungodly  nations.  No  learning, 
commerce,  arms,  territories,  or  skill,  has  ever  secured  a  re- 
bellious nation  against  the  sword  of  God's  justice.  Ask 
the  black  record  of  a  rebel  world's  history  for  an  instance. 
Egypt,  Canaan,  Nineveh,  Babylon,  Persia,  Greece,  Borne. 
Where  are  they  now?     Tyre  had  ships,  colonies?,  and  com- 


IS  GOD  EVERYBODY,  AND  EVERYBODY  GOD?  Ill 

» 

merce;  Rome  an  empire  on  wliicli  tlie  sun  never  set;  Greece 
had  philosophy,  arts,  and  liberty  secured  by  a  confederation 
of  republics;  Spain  the  treasures  of  earth's  gold  and  silver, 
and  the  possession  of  half  the  globe.  Did  these  secure 
them  against  the  moral  government  of  God? 

No !  God's  law  sways  the  universe ;  that  law  which,  with 
the  brazen  fetters  of  eternal  justice,  binds  together  sin  and 
misery,  crime  and  punishment,  and  lays  the  burden  on  the 
backs  of  all  ungodly  nations,  irresistibly  forcing  them  down 
— down — down  the  road  to  ruin.  The  vain  imagination  that 
refuses  to  glorify  God  as  God,  leads  to  darkness  of  heart, 
thence  to  Atheism,  thence  to  gross  idolatry,  onward  to  sel- 
fish gratification,  violent  rapacity,  lust  of  conquest,  and  lux- 
ury, licentiousness,  and  efl'eminacy  begotten  of  its  spoils; 
then  military  tyranny,  civil  war,  servile  revolt,  anarchy, 
famine  and  pestilence,  and  the  sword  of  less  debauched 
neighbors,  Christ's  iron  scepter,  hurl  them  down  from  the 
pinnacle  of  greatness,  to  dash  them  in  pieces  against  each 
other,  in  the  valley  of  destruction;  and  there  they  lie, 
wrecks  of  nations,  ruins  of  empires,  naught  remaining,  save 
some  shivered  potsherds  of  former  greatness,  to  show  that 
once  they  were,  and  were  the  enemies  of  God. 

Oh,  America,  take  warning  ere  it  be  too  late !  God  rules 
the  nations.  "  He  that  chastiseth  the  heathen,  shall  he  not 
correct  you?" 

A  day  of  retribution,  reader,  comes  to  you,  as  an  individ- 
ual. Neither  your  insignificance  nor  your  unbelief  can  hide 
you  from  his  eye,  nor  can  your  puny  arm  shield  you  from 
his  righteous  judgment.  His  hand  shall  find  out  his  ene- 
mies. Oh,  fly  from  the  wrath  to  come!  "Seek  the  Lord 
while  he  may  be  found."  He  is  not  far  from  every  one  of 
us.  His  breath  is  in  our  nostrils.  His  "Word  is  in  our 
hands.  "Whosoever  shall  call  on  the  name  of  the  Lord 
shall  be  saved." 


CHAPTER    IV 


Wave  We    Any  Need  of  the  Bible? 

Religion  consists  of  the  knowledge  of  a  number  of  great 

facts,  and  of  a  course  of  life  suitable  to  them.     We  have 

seen  three  of  these :    that  God  created  the  world ;  that  he 

governs  it ;  and   that  he  is  able  to  conquer  his  enemies. 

There  are  others  of  the  same  sort  as  needful  to  be  known. 

Our  knowledge  of  these  facts,  or  our  ignorance  of  them, 

makes  not  the  slightest  difference  in  the  facts  themselves. 

God  is,  and  heaven  is,  and  hell  is,  and  sin  leads  to  it,  whether 

anybody  believes  these  things  or  not.     It  makes  no  sort  of 

difierence  in  the  beetling  cliff  and  swollen  flood  that  sweeps 

below  it,  that  the  drunken  man  declares  there  is  no  danger, 

and,  refusing  the  proffered  lantern,  gallops  on  toward  it  in 

the  darkness  of  the  night.     But  when  the  mangled  corpse 

is  washed  ashore,  every  one  sees  how  foolish  this  man  was, 

to  be  so  confident  in  his  ignorance  as  to  refuse  the  lantern, 

which  would  have  shown  him  his  danger,  and  guided  him  to 

the  bridge  where  he  might  have  crossed  in  safety.     Some  of 

the  facts  of  religion  lie  at  the  evening  end  of  life's  journey; 

the  darkness  of  death's  night  hides  them  from  mortal  eye ; 

and  living  men  might  guide  their  steps  the  better  by  asking 

counsel  of  one  who  knows  the  way.     If  they  get  along  no 

better  by  their  own  counsel  in  the  next  world  than  most  of 

them  do  in  this,  they  will  have  small  cause  to  bless  their 

teacher.     Who  can  tell  that  ignorance,  and  wickedness,  and 

wretchedness  are  not  as  tightly  tied  together  in  the  world 

to  come,  as  we  see  them  here  ? 

(112) 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ?  113 

Solomon  was  a  knowing  man  and  wise  ;  and  better  than 
that,  in  the  esteem  of  most  people,  he  made  money,  and 
tells  you  how  to  make  it,  and  keep  it.  You  will  make  a 
hundred  dollars  by  reading  his  Proverbs  and  acting  on  them. 
They  would  have  saved  some  of  you  many  a  thousand.  Of 
course  such  a  man  knew  something  of  the  world.  He  was 
a  wide-awake  trader.  His  ships  coasted  the  shores  of  Asia, 
and  Africa,  from  Madagascar  to  Japan  ;  and  the  overland 
mail  caravans  from  India  and  China  drew  up  in  the  depots 
he  built  for  them  in  the  heart  of  the  desert.  He  knew  the 
well-doing  people  with  whom  trade  was  profitable,  and  the 
savages  who  could  only  send  apes  and  peacocks.  He  was  a 
philosopher  as  well  as  a  trader,  and  could  not  help  being 
deeply  impressed  with  the  great  fact^  that  there  was  a  wide 
difference  among  the  nations  of  the  world.  Some  were  en- 
lightened, enterprising,  civilized,  and  flourishing;  others 
were  naked  savages,  living  in  ignorance,  poverty,  vice,  and 
starvation,  perpetually  murdering  one  another,  and  dying 
out  of  the  earth. 

Solomon  noticed  another  great  fact.  In  his  own  country, 
and  in  Chaldea,  Mesopotamia,  Egypt,  and  some  others,  God 
had  revealed  his  will  to  certain  persons  for  the  benefit  of 
their  neighbors.  He  did  so  generally  by  opening  the  eyes 
of  these  prophets  to  see  future  events,  and  the  great  facts 
of  the  unseen  world,  and  by  giving  them  messages  of  warn- 
ing and  instruction  to  the  nations.  From  this  mode  of  rev- 
elation, by  opening  the  prophets'  eyes  to  see  realities  invisi- 
ble to  others,  they  were  called  seers,  and  the  revelations 
they  were  commissioned  to  make  were  called  visions ;  and 
revelation  from  God  was  called,  in  general,  vision.  Solomon 
was  struck  with  the  fact  that  some  nations  were  thus  favored 
by  God,  and  other  nations  were  not.  The  question  would 
naturally  arise,  What  difference  does  it  make,  or  does  it 
make  any  difference,  whether  men  have  any  revelation  of 
God's  will  or  not? 
8 


114  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

Solomon  was  led  to  observe  a  third  great  fact.  The  na- 
tions which  were  favored  with  these  revelations  were  the 
civilized,  enterprising,  and  comparatively  prosperous  nations. 
In  proportion  to  the  amount  of  divine  revelation  they  had, 
and  their  obedience  to  it,  they  prospered.  The  nations  that 
had  no  revelation  from  God  were  the  idolatrous  savages,  who 
were  sinking  down  to  the  level  of  brutes,  and  perishing  off 
the  face  of  the  earth.  He  daguerreotypes  these  three  great 
facts  in  the  proverb  :  "  Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people 
perish ;  but  he  that  keepeth  the  law,  happy  is  he." 

Oh,  says  the  Rationalist,  the  world  is  wiser  now  than  it  was 
in  Solomon's  days.  He  lived  in  the  old  mythological  period, 
when  men  attributed  everything  extraordinary  to  the  gods. 
But  the  world  is  too  wise  now  to  believe  in  any  supernatural 
revelation.  "  The  Hebrew  and  Christian  religions  like  all 
others  have  their  myths."  "  The  fact  is,  the  pure  historic 
idea  was  never  developed  among  the  Hebrews  during  the 
whole  of  their  political  existence."  "  When,  therefore,  we 
meet  with  an  account  of  certain  phenomena,  or  events  of 
which  it  is  expressly  stated  or  implied  that  they  were  pro- 
duced immediately  by  God  himself  (such  as  divine  appari- 
tions, voices  from  heaven,  and  the  like),  or  by  human  beings 
possessed  of  supernatural  powers  (miracles,  pcophecies, 
etc.),  such  an  account  is  so  far  to  be  considered  not  historical." 
"  Indeed,  no  just  notion  of  the  true  nature  of  history  is  pos- 
sible without  a  perception  of  the  inviolability  of  the  chain 
of  finite  causes,  and  of  the  impossibility  of  miracles."*  A 
narrative  is  to  be  deemed  mythical,  1st.  "  When  it  proceeds 
from  an  age  in  which  there  were  no  written  records,  but 
events  were  transmitted  by  tradition  ;  2d.  When  it  presents, 
as  historical,  accounts  of  events  which  were  beyond  the 
reach  of  experience,  as  occurrences  connected  with  the  spir- 
itual world  ;  or  3d.  When  it  deals  in  the  marvelous,  and  is 


♦Strauss'  Life  of  Jesus,  64,  74,  87. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE?  115 

couclied  in  symbolical  language."*  So  also  a  host  of  others, 
who  pass  for  biblical  expositors,  lay  it  down  as  an  axiom, 
that  all  records  of  supernatural  events  are  mythical,  viz : 
fables,  falsehoods,  because  miracles  are  impossible.  Of 
course,  from  such  premises  the  conclusion  is  easy.  A  reve- 
lation from  God  to  man  is  a  supernatural  event,  and  super- 
natural events  are  impossible ;  therefore,  a  revelation  from 
God  is  impossible.  But  it  would  have  been  much  easier, 
and  quite  as  logical,  to  have  laid  down  the  axiom  in  plain 
words  at  first,  that  a  revelation  from  God  is  impossible,  as  to 
argue  it  from  such  premises ;  for  it  is  just  as  easy  to  say, 
that  a  revelation  from  God  is  impossible,  as  to  say  that  mira- 
cles are  impossible  ;  and  as  for  proof  of  either  one  or  the 
other,  we  must  just  take  their  word  for  it. 

One  can  not  help  being  amazed  at  the  cool  impudence 
with  which  these  men  take  for  granted  the  very  point  to  be 
proved,  and  set  aside,  as  unworthy  of  serious  examination, 
the  most  authentic  records  of  history,  simply  because  they 
do  not  coincide  with  their  so-called  philosophy ;  and  at  the 
credulity  with  which  their  followers  swallow  this  arrogant 
dogmatism,  as  if  it  were  self-evident  truth.  Let  us  look  at 
it  for  a  moment.  Other  religions  have  their  myths,  or 
fables,  therefore,  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  records  are 
fables,  says  the  Rationalist.  Profundity  of  logic  !  Counter- 
feit bank  bills  are  common,  therefore  none  are  genuine. 
"  The  fact  is,  the  pure  historic  idea  was  never  developed 
among  the  Hebrews,"  i.  e.,  Moses  and  the  prophets  were  all 
liars.  That  is  the  fact,  you  may  take  my  word  for  it.  "  In- 
deed, no  just  notion  of  the  true  nature  of  history  is  possible 
without  a  perception  of  the  inviolability  of  the  chain  of 
finite  causes,  and  of  the  impossibility  of  miracles"  — which 
translated  into  plain  words  is  simply  this  :  No  man  can  un- 
derstand history  who  believes  in  God  Almighty.    "  A  narra- 


*Bauer's  Hebrew  Mythology. 


116  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE? 

tive  is  to  be  deemed  fabulous  when  it  proceeds  from  an 
age  in  which  there  were  no  written  records,"  such,  for 
instance,  as  any  account  of  the  creation  of  the  first  man  — 
for  no  event  could  possibly  happen  unless  there  was  a  scribe 
there  to  write  it.  Or,  of  the  fall  of  man — we  do  not  know  that 
Adam  was  able  to  write,  and  no  man  can  tell  truth  unless  he 
writes  a  history.  ''  A  narrative  is  to  be  deemed  fabulous 
when  it  presents,  as  historical,  accounts  of  events  which  were 
beyond  the  reach  of  experience,  as  events  connected  with 
the  spiritual  world."  Is  it  not  self-evident  that  you  and  I 
have  had  experience  of  everything  in  the  whole  universe, 
and  whoever  tells  us  anything  which  we  have  never  seen  is 
a  liar.  "  When  a  narrative  deals  in  the  marvelous,"  such  as 
Xenophon's  Retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand,  Herodotus'  His- 
tory, or  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
dealing  as  it  does  in  such  marvelous  accounts  as  the  death 
of  half  the  inhabitants  of  the  empire  in  the  reign  of  Gale- 
rius,  or  any  other  history  of  wonderful  occurrence — it  is  of 
course  a  myth.  Does  not  is  very  one  know  that  nothing  mar- 
velous ever  happened,  or,  if  it  did,  would  any  historian 
trouble  himself  to  record  a  prodigy  ?  "  Or,  if  it  is  couched  in 
symbolical  language,"  as  is  every  eloquent  passage  in  Thu- 
cydides,  Robertson,  Gibbon,  or  Guizot,  the  records  of  China, 
and  of  India,  the  picture-writing  of  the  Peruvians,  and  es- 
pecially the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  which  were  fondly  ex- 
pected to  do  such  good  service  against  the  Bible — it  must 
be  at  once  rejected,  without  further  examination,  as  mytho- 
logical and  unworthy  of  any  credit  whatever.  Thus  we  are 
conclusively  rid  forever  of  the  Bible,  for  sure  enough  it  is 
couched  in  symbolical  language.  Blessed  deliverance  to  the 
world !  But  then,  alas  !  this  great  deliverance  is  accom- 
panied with  several  little  inconveniences.  All  poetry,  three- 
fourths  of  the  world's  history,  and  the  largest  part  of  its 
philosophy,  is  couched  in  symbolical  language,  and  especially 
the  whole  of  the  science  of  metaphysics,  from  which  these 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ?  117 

very  learned  writers  have  deduced  sucli  edifying  conclusions, 
is,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  nothing  but  a  symbolical 
application  of  the  terms  which  describe  material  objects,  to 
the  phenomena  of  mind.  Alas  !  we  must  forever  relinquish 
"the  absolute,"  and  "the  infinite,"  and  "the  conditioned," 
with  all  their  "  affinities  and  potencies,"  up  to  "  higher  uni- 
ty," and  "  the  rhythm  of  universal  existence,"  and  all  the 
rest  of  those  perspicuous  German  hieroglyphics,  whether  en- 
tombed in  their  native  pyramids  for  the  amazement  of  suc- 
ceeding generations,  by  Fichte,  Schelling,  or  Hegel,  or 
"  worshiping  in  the  great  cathedral  of  the  immensities," 
"with  their  heads  uplifted  into  infinite  space,"  or  "lying 
on  the  plane  of  their  own  consciousness,"  in  the  writings  of 
Carlyle,  Emerson,  and  Parker.  They  are  myths,  the  whole 
of  them,  for  they  "  are  couched  in  symbolical  language ;" 
and  Bauer,  De  Wette,  and  Strauss  have  pronounced  every 
thing  couched  in  symbolical  language  to  be  mythical.  Let 
us  henceforth  deliver  our  minds  from  all  anxiety  about  his- 
tory, philosophy,  or  religion,  and  stick  to  the  price  current 
and  the  multiplication  table,  the  only  accounts  that  are  not 
"couched  in  symbolical  language." 

Such  is  the  sort  of  trash  that  passes  for  profound  philoso- 
phy when  once  it  is  made  unintelligible,  and  such  are  the 
canons  of  interpretation  with  which  men  calling  themselves 
philosophers  and  Christians  sit  down  to  investigate  the 
claims  of  the  Bible  as  a  revelation  from  God.  If  they 
would  speak  out  their  true  sentiments,  they  would  say, 
"  There  can  not  be  any  revelation  from  God,  because  there 
is  no  God."  But  they  could  not  call  themselves  professors 
of  Christian  colleges,  and  pastors  of  Christian  churches,  and 
reap  the  emoluments  of  such  situations,  if  they  would  hon- 
estly avow  their  Atheism.  Besides,  the  world  would  see  too 
plainly  the  drift  of  their  teaching  ;  therefore  it  is  cloaked 
under  a  profession  of  belief  in  God,  the  Creator,  who  how- 


118  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE  ? 

ever  is  to  be  carefully  prevented  from  ever  showing  himself 
again  in  the  world  he  has  made. 

No  proof  is  attempted  for  the  declaration  that  miracles 
are  impossible.  Yet,  surely,  if  it  implies  a  contradiction  to 
say  so,  that  contradiction  could  be  shown.  That  it  is  not 
self-evident  is  shown  by  the  general  belief  of  mankind  that 
miracles  have  occurred.  No  man  who  believes  in  a  supernat- 
ural being  can  deny  the  possibility  of  supernatural  actings. 
The  creation  of  the  world  is  the  most  stupendous  of  all  mir- 
acles, utterly  beyond  the  power  of  any  finite  causes,  and 
entirely  beyond  the  reach  of  our  experience,  yet  some  of 
these  men  admit  that  this  miracle  occurred.  Supernatural 
events  then  are  not  impossible,  nor  unprecedented. 

The  vain  notion  that  God,  having  created  the  world  at 
first,  left  it  for  ever  after  to  the  operation  of  natural 
laws,  is  conclusively  demolished  by  the  discoveries  of  geol- 
ogy. These  discoveries  established  the  fact  recorded  in 
Scripture,  that  in  bringing  the  world  into  its  present  form 
there  were  several  distinct  and  successive  interpositions  of 
supernatural  power,  in  the  distinct  and  successive  creations 
of  diiTerent  species  of  vegetable  and  animal  life.  In  former 
periods,  they  tell  us,  the  earth  was  so  warm  that  the  present 
races  of  men  and  animals  could  not  have  lived  on  it,  and 
the  plants  and  animals  of  that  age  could  not  live  now. 
These  very  men  are  profuse  in  proving  that  the  earth  ex- 
isted for  ages  before  man  made  his  appearance  upon  it.  This 
being  the  case,  we  are  compelled  to  acknowledge  the  crea- 
ting power  of  God  above  the  laws  of  nature,  for  there  is  no 
law  of  nature  which  can  either  create  a  new  species  oi 
plants  or  animals,  nor  yet  change  one  kind  into  another, 
make  an  oak  into  a  larch,  or  an  ox  into  a  sheep,  or  a  goose 
into  a  turkey,  or  a  megatherium  into  an  elephant,  much  less 
into  a  man.  Some  men  have  dreamed  of  such  changes  as 
these,  but  no  instance  of  such  a  change  has  ever  been  al- 
leged in  proof  of  the  notion.     The  most  distinguished  anat- 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE?  119 

omists  and  geologists  are  fully  agreed  that  no  such  change 
of  one  animal  into  another  ever  took  place  ;  much  less  that 
any  animal  ever  was  changed  into  a  man.  Cuvier,  from  his 
comprehensive  survey  of  the  fossils  of  former  periods,  es- 
tablishes the  fast,  "  that  the  species  now  living  are  not  mere 
varieties  of  the  species  which  are  lost."  And  Agassiz  says, 
"  I  have  the  conviction  that  species  have  been  created  suc- 
cessively, at  distinct  intervals."^  Revelations  of  God's 
special  interpositions  in  the  affairs  of  this  world  are  thus 
written  by  his  own  finger  in  the  fossils  and  coal,  and  en- 
graved on  the  everlasting  granite  of  the  earth's  foundation 
stones.  Dumb  beasts  and  dead  reptiles  start  forward  to 
give  their  irrefutable  testimony  to  the  repeated  supernatural 
acts  of  their  Creator  in  this  world  which  he  had  made. 
Every  distinct  species  of  plants  and  animals  is  proof  of  a 
distinct  supernatural  overruling  of  the  present  laws  of  na- 
ture. The  experience  of  man  is  not  the  limit  of  knowledge. 
His  own  existence  is  a  proof  that  the  chain  of  finite  causes 
is  not  inviolable.  Creology  sweeps  away  the  very  foundations 
of  skepticism,  by  demonstrating  that  certain  phenomena 
produced  immediately  by  God  himself — the  phenomena  of 
the  creation  of  life  —have  occurred  repeatedly  in  the  history 
of  our  globe.  Revelation  is  not  impossible  because  super- 
natural. The  world  is  just  as  full  of  supernatural  works  as 
of  natural.  Nor  is  it  incredible  because  it  records  miracles. 
The  miracles  recorded  in  the  coal  measures  are  as  astonish- 
ing as  any  recorded  in  the  Bible. 

The  Rationalist  next  assures  us,  however,  that  any  ex- 
ternal revelation  from  God  to  man  is  useless,  because  man  is 
wise  enough  without  it.  The  vulgar  exposition  of  this  sen- 
timent is  familiar  to  every  reader,  "  You  need  not  begin 
to  preach  Bible  to  me.  I  know  my  duty  well  enough  with- 
out the  Bible."     The  more  educated  attempt  to  reason  the 

*  See  Pearson  on  Infidelity,  page  93,  40th  edition  ;   and  Agassiz's 
Penikese   Lectures. 


120  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

matter  after  this  fashion :  "  Miraculous  phenomena  will 
never  prove  the  goodness  and  veracity  of  God,  if  we  do  not 
know  these  qualities  in  him  without  a  miracle."*  We  may 
remark,  in  passing,  that  there  are  some  other  attributes  of 
God  besides  goodness  and  veracity — holiness  and  justice  for 
instance — which  are  proved  by  miracles.  ''Can  thunder 
from  the  thirty-two  azimuths,  repeated  daily  for  centuries, 
make  God's  laws  more  godlike  to  me  ?  Brother,  no.  Per- 
haps I  am  grown  to  be  a  man  now,  and  do  not  need  the 
thunder  and  the  terror  any  longer.  Perhaps  I  am  above 
being  frightened.  Perhaps  it  is  not  fear  but  reverence  that 
shall  now  lead  me  !  Revelation  !  Inspirations  !  And  thy 
own  god-created  soul,  dost  thou  not  call  that  a  revelation  ?"f 
It  is  nmnifest,  however,  that  if  Mr.  Carlyle  needs  not  the 
Sinai  thunder  to  assure  him  that  the  law  given  on  Sinai  was 
from  God,  there  were  then,  and  are  now,  many  who  do, 
and  some  of  his  own  sect  who  doubt  in  spite  of  it.  If  he 
is  above  the  weakness  of  fearing  God,  all  the  world  is  not  so. 
The  claims  of  a  divine  teacher  are  as  unceremoniously  re- 
jected as  those  of  a  divine  revelation.  "  If  it  depends  on 
Jesus  it  is  not  eternally  true,  and  if  it  is  not  eternally  true 
it  is  no  truth  at  all,"  says  Parker.  As  if  eternally  true,  and 
sufficiently  known,  were  just  the  same  thing;  or  as  if  be- 
cause vaccination  would  always  have  prevented  the  small- 
pox, the  world  is  under  no  obligation  to  Jenner  for  inform- 
ing us  of  the  fact.  In  the  same  tone  Emerson  despises 
instruction :  "  It  is  not  instruction  but  provocation  that  I 
can  receive  from  another  soul.  What  he  announces,  I  must 
find  true  in  me,  or  wholly  reject;  and  on  his  word,  or  as  his 
second,  be  he  who  he  may,  I  can  accept  nothing."  Again 
says  Parker,  "  Christianity  is  dependent  on  no  outside  au- 


♦Newman's  Phases  of  Faith,  157. 
tCarlyle's  Past  and  Present,  807. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE?  121 

thority.  We  verify  its  eternal  truth  in  our  soul."*  His 
aim  is  "  to  separate  religion  from  whatever  is  finite — Church, 
book,  person— and  let  it  rest  on  its  absolute  truth."f  "It 
bows  to  no  idols,  neither  the  Church,  nor  the  Bible,  nor  yet 
Jesus,  but  God  only;  its  Redeemer  is  within;  its  salvation 
within;  its  heaven  and  its  oracle  of  God. "J  The  whole 
strain  of  this  school  of  writers  and  their  disciples  is  one  of 
depreciation  of  external  revelation,  and  of  exaltation  of  the 
inner  light  which  every  man  is  supposed  to  carry  within 
him.  Eeligion  is  "no  Morrison's  pill  from  without,"  but  a 
"clearing  of  the  inner  light,"  a  "reawakening  of  our  own 
selves  from  within. "§  So  Mr.  Newman  ||  abundantly  argues 
that  an  authoritative  book  revelation  of  moral  and  spiritual 
truth  is  impossible,  that  God  reveals  himself  within  us  and 
not  without  us,  and  that  a  revelation  of  all  moral  and  relig- 
ious truth  necessary  for  us  to  know  is  to  be  obtained  by  in- 
sight, or  gazing  into  the  depths  of  our  own  consciousness. 
The  sum  of  the  whole  business  is,  that  neither  God  nor  man 
can  reveal  any  religious  truth  to  our  minds,  or  as  Parker  fe- 
licitously expresses  it,  "on  his  word,  or  as  his  second,  be 
he  who  he  may,  I  can  accept  nothing." 

Now,  we  are  tempted  to  ask.  Who  are  these  wonderful 
prodigies,  so  incapable  of  receiving  instruction  from  any- 
body? And  to  our  amazement  we  learn,  that  some  forty 
odd  years  ago  they  made  their  appearance  among  mankind 
as  little  squalling  babies,  without  insight  enough  to. know 
their  own  names,  or  where  they  came  from,  and  were  actually 
dependent  on  an  external  revelation,  from  their  nurses,  for 
sense  enough  to  find  their  mothers'  breasts.  And  as  they 
grew  a  little  larger,  they  obtained  the  power  of  speaking 
articulate  sounds  by  external  revelation,  hearing  and  imita- 
ting the  sounds  made  by  others.    Further,  upon  a  memorable 


*  Discourse  on  Religion,  p.  209.     t  Carlyle's  Past  and  Present,  p. 
312.    tib.  p.  37.    §  The  Soul,  p.  342.    jj  lb.  p.  359. 


122  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

day,  they  had  a  "book  revelation"  made  to  them,  in  the 
shape  of  a  penny  primer,  and  were  initiated  into  the  mys- 
teries of  A,  B,  C,  by  "the  instructions  of  another,  be  he 
who  he  may."  There  was  absolutely  not  the  least "  insight," 
or  "  spiritual  faculty,"  or  "  self-consciousness  "  in  one  of  them, 
by  which  they  then  could,  or  ever  to  this  hour  did,  "find 
true  within  them  "  any  sort  of  necessary  connection  between 
the  signs,  c,  a,  t— d,  o,  g  — and  the  sounds  cat^  dog,  or  any 
other  sounds  represented  by  any  other  letters  of  the  alpha- 
bet. Faith  in  the  word  of  their  teachers  is  absolutely  the 
sole  foundation  and  only  source  of  their  ability  to  read  and 
write.  On  "the  word  of  another,  and  as  his  second,  be  he 
who  he  may,"  every  one  of  them  has  accepted  every  intel- 
ligible word  he  speaks  or  writes. 

There  h  living  on  Martha's  Vineyard  an  old  man  who  has 
never  been  oflf  the  island,  and  the  extent  of  his  knowledge 
is  bounded  by  the  confines  of  his  home.  He  has  been  told 
of  a  war  between  the  North  and  South,  but  as  he  had  never 
heard  the  din  of  battle,  nor  seen  any  soldiers,  he  considered 
it  a  hoax.  He  is  utterly  unable  to  read,  and  is  ignorant  to 
the  last  degree.  A  good  story  is  told  of  his  first  and  only 
day  at  school.  He  was  quite  a  lad  when  a  lady  came  to  the 
district,  where  his  father  lived,  to  teach  school.  He  was 
sent,  and  as  the  teacher  was  classifying  the  school,  he  was 
called  upon  in  turn  and  interrogated  as  to  his  studies.  Of 
course  he  had  to  say  he  had  never  been  to  school,  and  knew 
none  of  his  letters.  The  schoolmistress  gave  him  a  seat  on 
one  side  until  she  had  finished  the  preliminary  examination 
of  the  rest  of  the  scholars.  She  then  called  him  to  her  and 
drew  on  the  blackboard  the  letter  A,  and  told  him  what  it 
was,  and  asked  him  to  remember  how  it  looked.  He  looked 
at  it  a  moment,  and  then  inquired : 

"  H-h-how  do  you  know  it's  A?" 

The  teacher  replied  that  when  she  was  a  little  girl  she 
had  been  to  school  to  au  old  gentleman,  who  told  her  so. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ?  123 

The  boy  eyed  the  A  for  a  moment  and  then  asked : 

"H-h-how  do  you  know  but  he  1-1-lied?" 

The  teacher  could  not  get  over  this  obstacle,  and  the  poor 
boy  was  sent  home  as  incorrigible. 

Mr.  Emerson,  and  the  whole  school  of  those  who  despise 
instruction,  had  better  appoint  this  man  their  prophet  of  the 
inner  light,  and  endow  Martha's  Vineyard  as  the  Penikese 
of  skepticism. 

But  the  knowledge  of  letters  is  not  half  of  their  indebt- 
edness to  external  revelation.  For  they  will  not  deny  that 
a  Fiji  cannibal  has  just  the  same  "insight,"  "spiritual 
faculty,"  '-mighty  and  transcendent  soul,"  "self-conscious- 
ness," or  any  other  name  by  which  they  may  dignify  our 
common  humanity,  which  they  themselves  posesss.  How 
does  it  happen,  then,  that  these  writejs  are  not  assembled 
around  the  cannibal's  oven,  smearing  their  faces  with  the 
blood,  and  feasting  themselves  on  the  limbs  of  women  and 
children?  The  inner  nature  of  the  cannibal  and  of  the 
Rationalist  is  the  same  —whence  comes  the  difference  of  char- 
acter and  conduct?  And  the  inner  light,  too,  is  the  same; 
for  they  assure  us  that  "  inspiration,  like  God's  omnipres- 
ence, is  coextensive  with  the  race."  Is  it  not,  after  all, 
mere  external  revelation,  in  the  shape  of  education — aye, 
moral  and  religious  teaching  that  makes  the  whole  differ- 
ence between  the  civilized  American  and  his  inspired  Fiji 
brother? 

These  gentlemen  not  only  acknowledge,  but  try  to  repay 
their  obligations  to  external  revelation.  As  it  is  impossible 
for  God  to  give  the  world  a  book  revelation  of  moral  and 
religious  truth,  they  modestly  propose  to  come  to  his  assist- 
ance, it  being  quite  possible  for  some  men  to  do  what  is  im- 
possible for  God.  Accordingly,  we  have  a  book  revelation 
of  moral  and  religious  truth,  from  one,  in  his  treatise  on 
"The  Soul,"  an  "external  revelation"  from  another,  in  his 
"Discourse  Concerning  Religion,"  a  "  Morrison's  pill  from  the 


124  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

outside,"  from  a  third,  in  his  "Past  and  Present,"  and  "an- 
nouncements" from  a  fourth,  which  assuredly  the  great  mass 
of  mankind  never  "found  true  within  them,"  else  his  ora- 
tions and  publications  had  not  been  needed  to  convert  them. 
It  is  to  be  understood,  then,  that  an  "external  revelation," 
or  a  "book  revelation"  of  spiritual  truth  is  impossible,  only 
when  it  comes  from  God,  but  that  these  gentlemen  have 
proved  it  quite  possible  for  themselves  to  deliver  one. 

In  so  doing  they  have  undoubtedly  attempted  to  meet  the 
wishes  of  the  greater  part  of  mankind,  who  have  in  all  lands 
and  in  all  ages  longed  for  some  outward  revelation  from  God, 
and  testified  their  desire  by  running  after  all  sorts  of  omens, 
auguries,  and  oracles,  consulting  witches,  and  treasuring 
Sibylline  leaves,  employing  writing  mediums,  and  listening 
to  spirit-rappers.  The  "  inspiration  which  is  limited  to  no 
sect,  age,  or  nation — which  is  wide  as  the  world,  and  com- 
mon as  God,"*  has  never  produced  a  nation  of  Rational- 
ists; a  fact  very  unaccountable,  if  Rationalism  be  true; 
and  one  which  might  well  lead  these  writers  to  acknowledge 
at  least  one  kind  of  total  depravity,  namely,  that  inspired 
men  should  love  the  darkness  of  external  revelations,  and 
even  of  book  revelations,  and  read  Bibles,  and  Korans,  and 
Vedas,  and  "Discourses  Concerning  Religion,"  and  "Phases 
of  Faith,"  while  yet  "everything  that  is  of  use  to  man 
lies  in  the  plane  of  our  own  consciousness."  Surely,  such 
a  universal  craving  after  an  external  revelation  testifies  to  a 
felt  necessity  for  it,  and  renders  it  probable,  or  at  least  de- 
sirable, that  God  would  supply  the  deficiency.  Is  the  re- 
ligious appetite  the  only  one  for  which  God  has  provided 
no  supply? 

The  fact  is  undeniable,  that  the  grand  distinction  between 
man  and  the  brutes  presents  itself  right  at  this  point.  God 
guides  animals  by  direct  revelation — by  their  instincts ;  but 
having  given  man  reason,  and  free  will,  he  gives  him  the 

*  Parker's  Discourses,  171,  33. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ?  125 

whole  field  of  life  for  their  exercise  upon  the  indirect  reve- 
lations he  makes  to  us  through  the  mediation  of  others. 
For  all  that  we  know  of  history,  geography,  politics,  me- 
chanics, agriculture,  poetry,  philosophy,  or  any  of  the  com- 
mon business  of  life,  from  the  baking  of  a  loaf  of  bread,  or 
the  sewing  of  a  shirt,  to  the  following  of  a  funeral,  and  the 
digging  of  a  grave,  we  are  indebted  to  education,  not  to  in- 
spiration. All  analogy  then  induces  the  belief  that  religion 
also  will  be  taught  to  mankind  by  the  ministry  of  human 
teachers,  rather  than  by  the  direct  inspiration  of  every  in- 
dividual. 

But  we  are  instructed,  that,  "as  we  have  bodily  senses  to 
lay  hold  on  matter,  and  supply  bodily  wants,  through  which 
we  obtain  naturally  all  needed  material  things,  so  we  have 
spiritual  faculties  to  lay  hold  on  God,  and  supply  spiritual 
wants ;  through  them  we  obtain  all  needed  spiritual  things." 
That  we  have  both  bodily  senses  and  spiritual  faculties  is 
doubtless  true ;  but  whether  either  the  one  or  the  other  ob- 
tain all  needed  things  is  somewhat  doubtful.  I  can  not  tell 
how  it  is  with  mankind  in  Boston,  for  I  am  not  there;  and 
this  being  a  matter  in  which  religious  truth  is  concerned, 
Mr.  Emerson  will  not  allow  me  to  receive  instruction  about 
it  from  any  other  soul ;  but  I  see  from  my  window  a  poor 
widow,  with  five  children,  who  has  bodily  senses  to  lay  hold 
on  matter,  and  supply  bodily  wants ;  yet  in  my  opinion  she 
has  not  obtained  naturally  all  needed  material  things ;  and 
if  there  be  a  truth  which  lies  emphatically  in  the  plane  of 
her  own  consciousness,  it  is,  that  she  is  in  great  need  of  a 
cord  of  wood,  and  a  barrel  of  flour,  for  her  starving  chil- 
dren. I  know,  also,  a  man,  to  whom  God  gave  bodily  senses 
to  lay  hold  on  matter,  and  supply  bodily  wants,  who,  by  his 
drunkenness,  has  destroyed  these  bodily  senses,  and  brought 
his  family  to  utter  destitution  of  all  needed  material  things. 
From  one  cause  or  another,  I  find  multitudes  here  in  pov- 
erty  and   destitution,   notwithstanding   they  have    bodily 


126  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

senses.  It  is  reported,  also,  that  there  is  a  poor-house  in 
Boston,  and  poverty  in  Ireland,  and  starvation  in  Madeira, 
and  famine  in  the  inundated  provinces  of  France,  and  mis- 
ery and  destitution  in  London ;  which,  if  true,  completely 
overturns  this  beautiful  theory.  For,  if,  notwithstanding 
the  possession  of  bodily  senses,  men  do  starve  in  this  world 
for  want  of  needful  food  and  clothing,  it  is  very  possible 
that  they  may  have  spiritual  faculties  also,  and  yet  not  ob- 
tain through  them  all  needed  spiritual  things. 

The  second  part  of  the  theory  is  as  baseless  as  the  first. 
All  men  have  spiritual  faculties,  and  have  not  obtained  by 
them  all  needed  spiritual  things.  They  have  not  in  their 
own  opinion,  and  surely  they  are  competent  judges  of  "what 
lies  wholly  in  the  plane  of  their  own  consciousness."  In 
proof  of  the  fact  that  mankind  have  not,  in  their  own  opin- 
ion, obtained  all  needed  spiritual  things  by  the  use  of  their 
spiritual  faculties,  without  the  aid  of  external  revelation, 
"we  appeal  to  all  the  religions  of  mankind.  Heathen,  Moham- 
medan, and  Christian.  Every  one  of  these  appeals  to  reve- 
lations from  God.  Every  lawgiver  of  note  professed  to 
have  communication  with  heaven,  Zoroaster,  Minos,  Pythag- 
oras, Solon,  Lycurgus,  Numa,  Mohammed,  down  to  the  chief 
of  the  recent  revolution  in  China.  "  Whatever  becomes  of 
the  real  truth  of  these  relations,"  says  Strabo  of  those  be- 
fore his  day,  "  it  is  certain  that  men  did  believe  and  think 
them  true.''  If  mankind  has  found  the  supply  of  all  their 
spiritual  wants  within  themselves,  would  they  have  clung  in 
this  way  to  the  pretense  of  external  revelations?  Is  not  the 
abundance  of  quack  doctors  conclusive  proof  of  the  exist- 
ence of  disease,  and  of  the  need  of  physicians  ? 

Not  only  was  the  need  of  an  external  revelation  of  some 
sort  acknowledged  by  all  mankind,  but  the  insufficiency  of 
the  pretended  otacles  which  they  enjoyed  was  deplored  by 
the  wisest  part  of  them.  We  never  find  men  amidst  the 
dim  moonlight  of  tradition,  and  the  light  of  nature,  vaunt- 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE?  127 

iiig  the  sufficiency  of  their  inward  light ;  it  is  only  amidst 
the  full  blaze  of  noonday  Christianity  that  philosophers 
can  stand  up  and  declare  that  they  have  no  need  of  God's 
teaching.  Had  such  men  lived  in  Athens  of  old,  they  would 
have  found  men  possessed  of  spiritual  faculties,  and  those 
of  no  mean  order,  engaged  in  erecting  an  altar  with  this  in- 
scription, "  Jb  the  Unknown  God.''  One  of  the  wisest  of  the 
heathen  (Socrates)  acknowledged  that  he  could  attain  to  no 
certainty  respecting  religious  truth  or  moral  duty,  in  these 
memorable  words,  "We  must  of  necessity  wait,  till  some 
one  from  him  who  careth  for  us,  shall  come  and  instruct  us 
how  we  ought  to  behave  toward  God  and  toward  man."  The 
chief  of  the  Academy,  whose  philosophy  concerning  the 
eternity  of  matter  occupies  a  conspicuous  place  in  the  creed 
of  American  heathens,  had  no  such  confidence  in  the  suffi- 
ciency of  his  own  powers  of  discovering  religious  truth. 
"  We  can  not  know  of  ourselves  what  petition  will  be  pleas- 
ing to  God,  or  what  worship  we  should  pay  to  him ;  but  it  is 
necessary  that  a  lawgiver  should  be  sent  from  heaven  to  in- 
struct us."  "Oh  how  greatly  do  I  long  to  see  that  man!" 
He  further  declares  that  "  this  lawgiver  must  be  more  than 
man,  that  he  may  teach  us  the  things  man  can  not  know  hy 
his  own  nature.''-'^  Whether  this  want  of  a  revelation  from 
God  was  real,  or  merely  imaginary,  will  appear  by  a  brief 
review  of  the  opinions  and  practices  of  those  who  never  en- 
joyed, and  of  those  who  reject  the  light  of  God's  revelation. 
They  knew  not  God.  If  there  is  any  article  of  religion 
fundamental,  and  indispensable  to  its  very  existence,  it  is 
the  knowledge  of  God.  It  is  admitted  by  Rationalists  that 
the  spiritual  faculties  are  designed  to  lay  hold  on  God.  It 
has  been  proved  in  the  previous  chapter,  and  it  will  be  ad- 
mitted by  all  but  Atheists,  that  God  is  an  Intelligent  Being. 
And  further  it  has  been  proved  that  God  is  not  everything 


*  Plato.    Kepublic.    Books  IV.  and  YI.,  and  Alcibiades  II. 


128  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

and  everybody,  but  distinct  from  and  supreme  over  all  his 
works.  Besides,  in  this  country  at  least,  there  will  not  be 
much  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  propriety  of  a  rational 
being  adoring  a  brute,  or  a  log  of  wood,  or  a  lump  of  stone. 
It  will  be  allowed  that  such  stupidity  shows  both  ignorance 
and  folly.  Now  let  us  inquire  into  the  knowledge  of  God 
possessed  by  the  people  who  have  no  vision. 

The  Chaldeans,  the  most  ancient  people  of  whom  we  have 
any  account,  and  who  had  among  them  the  immediate  de- 
scendants of  Noah,  and  whatever  traditions  of  Noah's  proph- 
ecies they  preserved,  were  probably  the  best  instructed  of 
the  heathen.  Yet  we  find  that  they  gave  up  the  worship  of 
God,  adored  the  sun,  and  moon,  and  stars  of  heaven,  and  in 
process  of  time  degenerated  still  further,  and  worshiped 
dumb  idols.  From  this  rock  we  were  hewn ;  the  common 
names  of  the  days  of  the  week,  and  especially  of  the  first 
day  of  the  week,  will  forever  keep  up  a  testimony  to  the 
necessity  of  that  revelation  which  delivered  our  forefathers 
and  us  from  burning  our  children  upon  the  devil's  altars  on 
Sun -days. 

The  Egyptians  were  reputed  the  most  learned  of  man- 
kind, and  Egypt  was  considered  the  cradle  of  the  arts  and 
sciences.  In  her  existing  monuments,  hieroglyphic  inscrip- 
tions, and  tomb  paintings,  we  have  presented  to  us  the 
materials  for  forming  a  more  correct  opinion  of  the  religion 
and  life  of  the  Egyptians  than  of  any  other  ancient  peo- 
ple; and  the  investigation  of  these  monuments  is  still  add- 
ing to  our  information.  Infidel  writers  and  lecturers  have 
not  hesitated  to  allege  that  Moses  merely  taught  the  Israel- 
ites the  religion  of  Egypt;  and  some  have  had  the  hardi- 
hood to  allege  that  the  ten  commandments  are  found  written 
on  the  pyramids,  as  an  argument  against  the  necessity  of  a 
revelation.  If  the  statement  were  true,  it  would  by  no 
means  prove  the  conclusion.  Egypt  was  favored  with  divine 
revelations  to  several  of  her  kings,  and  enjoyed  occasional 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE?  129 

visits  from,  or  the  permanent  teachings  of,  such  prophets  as 
Abraham,  Jacob,  Joseph,  and  Moses,  for  four  hundred 
years;  a  fact  quite  sufficient  to  account  for  her  superiority 
to  other  heathen  nations,  as  well  as  for  the  existence  of 
some  traces  of  true  religion  on  her  monuments.  But  the 
alleged  fact  is  a  falsehood.  Some  good  moral  precepts  are 
found  on  the  Egyptian  monuments,  but  the  ten  command- 
ments are  not  there.  It  may  be  charitably  supposed  that 
those  who  allege  the  contrary  never  learned  the  ten  com- 
mandments, or  have  forgotten  them,  else  they  would  have 
remembered  that  the  first  commandment  is,  "  Thou  shalt 
have  no  other  gods  before  me;"  and  that  Pharaoh  indig- 
nantly asks,  "  Who  is  Jehovah  that  I  should  obey  his 
voice?  I  know  not  God :"  and  that  the  second  is,  "Thou 
shalt  not  make  unto  thee  any  graven  image,"  etc.,  and 
would  have  paused  before  alleging  that  these  commands 
were  engraved  on  the  very  temples  of  idols,  and  by  the 
priests  of  the  birds,  and  beasts,  and  images  of  creeping 
things  which  they  adored.  It  is  very  doubtful  if  they  be- 
lieved in  the  existence  of  one  supreme  God,  as  most  of  the 
heathen  did;  but  if  they  did,  "they  did  not  under  any 
form,  symbol,  or  hieroglyphic,  represent  the  idea  of  the 
unity  of  God,"  as  is  fully  proved  by  Wilkinson.*  On  the 
contrary,  the  monuments  confirm  the  satirical  sketch  of  the 
poet,t  as  to  the  "  monsters  mad  Egypt  worshiped  ;  here  a 
sea-fish,  there  a  river-fish;  whole  towns  adore  a  dog.  This 
place  fears  an  ibis  saturated  with  serpents ;  that  adores  a 
crocodile.  It  is  a  sin  to  violate  a  leek  or  onion,  or  break 
them  with  a  bite."  Cruel  wars  were  waged  between  differ- 
ent towns,  as  Plutarch  tells  us,  because  the  people  of  Cyn- 
opolis  would  eat  a  fish  held  sacred  by  the  citizens  of  Latop- 


*  Manners  and  Customs  of  Ancient  Egyptians,  Second  Series, 
Vol.  II.  page  176,  et  passim, 
t  Juvenal,  Satire  XV. 
9 


130  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE? 

olis.  Bulls,  and  dogs,  and  cats,  and  rats,  and  reptiles,  and 
dung  beetles,  were  devoutly  adored  by  the  learned  Egyp- 
tians. A  Roman  soldier,  who  had  accidentally  killed  one 
of  their  gods,  a  cat,  was  put  to  deatli  for  sacrilege/'^-  When- 
ever a  dog  died,  every  person  in  the  house  went  into  mourn- 
ing, and  fasted  till  night.  So  low  had  the  "great,  the 
mighty  and  transcendent  soul,"  been  degraded  that  there  is 
a  picture  extant  of  one  of  the  kings  of  Egypt  worshiping 
his  own  coffin !  Such  is  man's  knowledge  of  God  without  a 
revelation  from  him. 

The  Greeks,  from  their  early  intercourse  with  Egypt, 
borrowed  from  them  most  of  their  religion;  but  by  later 
connections  with  the  Hebrews,  about  the  time  of  Aristotle 
and  Alexander,  they  gathered  a  few  grains  of  truth  to  throw 
into  the  heap  of  error.  After  the  translation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures into  Greek,  in  the  reign  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  any 
of  their  philosophers  who  desired  might  easily  have  learned 
the  knowledge  of  the  true  God.  But  before  this  period  we 
find  little  or  no  sense  or  truth  in  their  religion.  And  the 
same  remarks  will  apply  to  the  Romans.  Their  gods  were 
as  detestable  as  they  were  numerous.  Hesiod  tells  us  they 
had  thirty  thousand.  Temples  were  erected  to  all  the 
passions,  fears,  and  diseases  to  which  humanity  is  subject. 
Their  supreme  god,  Jupiter,  was  an  adulterer,  Mars  a  mur- 
derer, Mercury  a  thief,  Bacchus  a  drunkard, Venus  a  harlot; 
and  they  attributed  other  crimes  to  their  gods  too  horrible 
to  be  mentioned.  Such  gods  were  worshiped,  with  appro- 
priate ceremonies,  of  lust,  drunkenness,  and  bloodshed. 
Their  most  sacred  mysteries,  carried  on  under  the  patron- 
age of  these  licentious  deities,  were  so  abominable  and  in- 
famous, that  it  was  found  necessary,  for  the  preservation  of 
any  remnant  of  good  order,  to  prohibit  them 

It  may  be  supposed  that  the  human  race  is  grown  wiser 


Diodorus  Siculus,  Book  I.  j 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE?  131 

now  than  in  the  days  of  Socrates  and  Cicero,  and  that  such 
abominations  are  no  longer  possible.  Turn  your  eyes,  then, 
to  India,  and  behold  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of 
rational  beings,  possessed  of  "spiritual  faculties,"  "insight," 
and  "the  religious  sentiment,"  worshiping  three  hundred 
and  thirty  millions  of  gods,  in  the  forms  of  hills,  and  trees, 
and  rivers,  and  rocks,  elephants,  tigers,  monkeys,  and  rats, 
crocodiles,  serpents,  beetles,  and  ants,  and  monsters  like  to 
nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  or  under  the  earth.  Take  one 
specimen  of  all.  There  is  "the  lord  of  the  world,"  Jugger- 
nath.  "  When  you  think  of  the  monster  block  of  the  idol, 
with  its  frightfully  grim  and  distorted  visage,  so  justly  styled 
the  Moloch  of  the  East,  sitting  enthroned  amid  thousands 
of  massive  sculptures,  the  representative  emblems  of  that 
cruelty  and  vice  which  constitute  the  very  essence  of  his 
worship ;  when  you  think  of  the  countless  multitudes  that 
annually  congregate  there,  from  all  parts  of  India,  many  of 
them  measuring  the  whole  distance  of  their  weary  pilgrim- 
age with  their  own  bodies ;  when  you  think  of  the  merit- 
earning  assiduities  constantly  practiced  by  crowds  of  devo- 
tees and  religious  mendicants,  around  the  holy  city,  some 
remaining  all  day  with  their  head  on  the  ground,  and  their 
feet  in  the  air;  others  with  their  bodies  entirely  covered 
with  earth ;  some  cramming  their  eyes  with  mud,  and  their 
mouths  with  straw,  while  others  lie  extended  in  a  puddle  of 
water;  here  one  man  lying  with  his  foot  tied  to  his  neck, 
another  with  a  pot  of  fire  on  his  breast,  a  third  enveloped 
in  a  network  of  ropes;  when,  besides  these  self-inflicted  tor- 
ments, you  think  of  the  frightful  amount  of  involuntary 
suffering  and  wretchedness  arising  from  the  exhaustion  of 
toilsome  pilgrimages,  the  cravings  of  famine,  and  the  scourg- 
ings  of  pestilence ;  when  you  think  of  the  day  of  the  high 
festival— how  the  horrid  king  is  dragged  forth  from  his  tem- 
ple, and  mounted  on  his  lofty  car,  in  the  presence  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands,  that  cause  the  very  earth  to  shake  with 


132  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

shouts  of  '  Victory  to  Juggernath,  our  Lord ; '  how  the  offi- 
ciating high  priest,  stationed  in  front  of  the  elevated  idol, 
commences  the  public  service  by  a  loathsome  pantomimic 
exhibition,  accompanied  with  the  utterance  of  filthy,  blas- 
phemous songs,  to  which  the  vast  multitude  at  intervals  re- 
spond, not  in  the  strains  of  tuneful  melody,. but  in  loud  yells 
of  approbation,  united  with  a  kind  of  hissing  applause; 
when  you  think  of  the  carnage  that  ensues,  in  the  name  of 
sacred  olfering — how,  as  the  ponderous  machine  rolls  on, 
grating  harsh  thunder,  one  and  another  of  the  more  enthu- 
siastic devotees  throw  themselves  beneath  the  wheels,  and 
are  instantly  crushed  to  pieces,  the  infatuated  victims  of 
hellish  superstition ;  when  you  think  of  the  numerous  Gol- 
gothas  that  bestud  the  neighboring  plain,  where  the  dogs, 
jackals  and  vultures  seem  to  live  on  human  prey;  and  of 
those  bleak  and  barren  sands  that  are  forever  whitened  with 
the  skulls  and  bones  of  deluded  pilgrims  which  lie  bleach- 
ing in  the  sun,"*  you  will  be  able  to  see  an  awful  force  of 
meaning  in  the  words  of  our  text,  and  to  realize  more  fully 
the  necessity  of  a  revelation  from  God,  for  the  preser- 
vation of  animal  life  to  man.  Literally,  where  there  is  no 
vision  the  people  'perish.  Man  doth  not  live  by  bread  only, 
but  by  every  word  which  proceedeth  from  the  mouth  of 
God. 

Take  one  other  illustration  of  ignorance  of  God  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  close  their  eyes  against  the  light  of  rev- 
elation— the  heathen  of  Europe  and  America,  possessing 
that  inspiration  which  is  wide  as  the  world,  looking  abroad 
upon  all  the  glorious  works  of  the  great  Creator,  and  de- 
claring there  is  no  God.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  men, 
possessed  of  this  same  inspiration,  deifying  everything,  and 
outrunning  even  the  Hindoos  in  the  multitude  of  their  di- 
vinities, declaring  that  every  stick,  and  stone,  and  serpent, 


Duffs  India,  page  222. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ?  133 

and  snail  that  crawls  on  the  earth  is  God,  and  making  pro- 
fessions of  holding  spiritual  communings  with  them  all.  To 
crown  the  monument  of  folly,  the  chief  of  the  Positive 
Philoso})hy  comes  forth  with  a  revelation  from  his  spiritual 
faculties,  in  which  by  way  of  improving  on  the  proverb 
"both  are  best,"  and  of  being  sure  of  the  truth,  he  unites 
Atheism,  and  Pantheism,  and  Idolatry — teaches  his  child  to 
worship  idols,  the  youth  to  believe  in  one  God,  and  himself 
and  other  full-grown  men  to  adore  the  "resultant  of  all  the 
forces  capable  of  voluntarily  contributing  to  the  perfeetion- 
ing  of  the  universe,  not  forgetting  his  worthy  friends,  the 
animals^  To  such  darkness  are  men  justly  condemned 
who  shut  their  eyes  against  the  light  of  God's  revelation. 
Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish  intellectually. 
He  who  turns  away  his  ears  from  the  truth  must  be  turned 
unto  fables.  "  Hear  ye  and  give  ear,  be  not  proud,  for  the 
Lord  hath  spoken.  Give  glory  to  the  Lord  your  God  be- 
fore he  cause  darkness,  and  before  your  feet  stumble  upon 
the  dark  mountains,  and  while  ye  look  for  light,  he  turn  it 
into  the  shadow  of  death,  and  make  it  gross  darkness." 

Without  a  revelation  from  God  the  mind  of  man  can  at- 
tain to  no  certainty  regarding  the  tnost  important  of  all  his 
interests,  the  destiny  of  his  immortal  soul.  He  knows  well — 
for  every  sickness,  and  sorrow,  and  calamity  declares  it,  and 
quick  returning  troubles  will  not  allow  him  to  forget — that 
the  Ruler  of  the  world  is  offended  with  him;  and  conscience 
tells  him  why.  The  sense  of  guilt  is  common  to  the  human 
ra:e.  This  is,  indeed,  "the  inspiration  which  knows  no 
sect,  no  country,  no  religion,  no  age;  which  is  as  wide  as 
humanity."  Reason  asks  herself,  Will  God  be  always  thus 
angry  with  me?  Shall  I  always  feel  these  pangs  of  remorse 
for  my  sins?  Will  misery  follow  me  forever,  as  I  see  and 
feel  that  it  does  here?  Or  shall  my  soul  exist  under  God's 
frowns,  or  perish  under  his  just  sentence,  even  as  my  body 
perishes?     Does  the  grave  hide  forever  all  that  I  loved? 


134  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

Have  they  ceased  to  be?  Shall  we  ever  meet  again? 
Or  must  I  say,  "Farewell,  farewell!  An  eternal  farewell !" 
And  in  a  few  days  myself  also  cease  to  be?  The  only 
answer  Reason  gives  is — solemn  silence. 

The  wisest  of  men  could  not  tell.  Who  has  not  dropped 
a  tear  over  the  dying  words  of  Socrates,  "  I  am  going  out  of 
the  world,  and  you  are  to  continue  in  it,  but  which  of  us 
has  the  better  part  is  a  secret  to  every  one  but  God."  Cicero 
contended  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul  against  the  multi- 
tudes of  philosophers  who  denied  it  in  his  day ;  yet,  after 
recounting  their  various  opinions,  he  is  obliged  to  ?ay, 
"Which  of  these  is  true,  Grod  alone  knows;  and  which  is 
most  probable,  a  very  great  question."*  And  Seneca,  on  a 
review  of  this  subject,  says:  "Immortality,  however  desir- 
able, was  rather  promised  than  proved  by  these  great  men."f 

The  multitude  had  but  two  ideas  on  the  subject.  Either 
their  ghosts  would  wander  eternally  in  the  land  of  shadows, 
or  else  they  would  pass  into  a  succession  of  other  bodies,  of 
animals  or  men.  From  the  nakedness  and  desolation  of  un- 
clothed spirit,  and  the  possibility  which  this  notion  held 
out  of  some  close  contact  with  a  holy  and  just  judge,  the 
soul  shrank  back  to  the  hope  of  the  metempsychoois,  and 
hoped  rather  to  dwell  in  the  body  of  a  brute,  than  btj  utterly 
unclothed  and  mingle  with  spirits.  This  is  the  delusion 
cherished  by  the  people  of  India  and  many  other  lands  to 
this  day.  How  unsatisfactory  to  the  dying  sinnei  this  un- 
certainty. "  Tell  me,"  said  a  wealthy  Hindoo,  who  bad  given 
all  his  wealth  to  the  Brahmins  who  surrounded  his  dying 
bed,  that  they  might  obtain  pardon  for  his  sins,  "Tell  me 
what  will  become  of  my  soul  when  I  die?"  "Your  soul 
will  go  into  the  body  of  a  holy  cow."  "And  after  that?" 
"It  will  pass  into  the  body  of  the  divine  peacock."     "And 


«■  Tiisc.  Qua^t.  lib.  1. 
t  Seneca,  Ep.  102. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE?  135 

after  that?"  "  It  will  pass  into  a  flower."  <'  Tell  me,  oh ! 
tell  me,"  cried  the  dying  man,  "where  will  it  go  last  of  all?" 
Where  will  it  go  last  of  all?  Aye,  that  is  the  question 
Reason  can  not  answer. 

The  rejectors  of  the  Bible  here  are  as  uncertain  on  this  all- 
important  subject  as  the  heathen  of  India.  They  have  every 
variety  of  oracles,  and  conjectures,  and  suppositions  about  the 
other  world;  but  for  their  guesses  they  offer  no  proof. 
When  they  give  us  their  oracles  as  if  they  were  known 
truths,  we  are  compelled  to  ask.  How  do  you  know?  The 
only  thing  in  which  they  are  agreed  among  themselves  is 
in  denying  the  resurrection  of  the  body;  a  point  which 
they  gathered  from  their  heathen  classics,  A  poor,  empty, 
naked,  shivering,  table-rapping  spirit,  obliged  to  fly  over  the 
world  at  the  sigh  of  any  silly  sewing  girl,  or  the  bidding  of 
some  brazen-fa  ed  strumpet,  is  all  that  ever  shall  exist  of 
Washington,  or  Newton,  in  the  scheme  oP  one  class  of  Bible 
rejectors.  To  obtain  rest  from  such  a  doom,  others  fly  to 
the  eternal  tomb,  and  inform  us  that  the  soul  is  simply  an 
acting  of  the  brain,  and  when  the  brain  ceases  to  act,  the 
soul  ceases  also.  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we 
die.  But  even  this  hog  philosophy  is  reasonable,  compared 
with  the  dogma  of  the  large  majority,  that  a  man  may  blas- 
pheme, swear,  lie,  steal,  murder,  and  commit  adultery,  and 
go  straight  to  heaven — that  "many  a  swarthy  Indian  who 
bowed  down  to  wood  and  stone — many  a  grim-faced  Cal- 
muck  who  worshiped  thp  great  god  of  storms — many  a 
Grecian  peasant  who  did  homage  to  Phoebus  Apollo  when 
the  sun  rose  or  went  down — many  a  savage,  his  hands 
smeared  all  over  with  human  sacrifice — shall  sit  down  with 
Moses  and  Jesus  in  the  kingdom  of  God."*  To  such  wild 
unreason  does  the  mind  of  man  descend  when  it  rejects  the 
Bible. 

Life  and  immortality  are  brought  to  light  by  the  gospel. 

*  Parker's  Discourse,  83. 


136  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

Where  there  is  no  vision ,  hope  perishes.  The  only  plausible 
creed  for  him  who  rejects  it  is  the  eternal  tomb,  and  the 
heart-chilling  inscription:  "Death  is  an  eternal  sleep!" 

Without  a  revelation  from  God,  men  are  as  ignorant  hoto 
to  live,  as  how  to  die.  They  have  no  rule  of  life  having 
either  truth  or  authority  to  direct  them.  Our  Anglo-Saxon 
ancestors,  of  the  purity  of  whose  blood  we  are  so  proud, 
trusted  to  their  magical  incantations  for  the  cure  of  dis- 
eases, for  the  success  of  their  tillage,  for  the  discovery  of 
lost  property,  for  un charming  cattle  and  the  prevention  of 
casualties.  One  day  was  useful  for  all  things;  another, 
though  good  to  tame  animals,  was  baleful  to  sow  seed.  One 
day  was  favorable  to  the  commencement  of  business,  an- 
other to  let  blood,  and  others  wore  a  forbidding  aspect  to 
these  and  other  things.  On  this  day  they  were  to  buy,  on 
a  second  to  sell,  on  a.  third  to  hunt,  on  a  fourth  to  do  noth- 
ing. If  a  child  was  born  on  such  a  day,  it  would  live;  if 
on  another,  its  life  would  be  sickly ;  if  on  another,  it  would 
perish  early.*  Their  descendants  who  reject  the  Bible  are 
fully  as  superstitious.  Astrologers,  and  Mediums,  and 
Clairvoyants,  in  multitudes,  find  a  profitable  trade  among 
them ;  and  one  prominent  anti-Bible  lecturer  will  cure  you 
of  any  disease  you  have,  if  you  will  only  inclose,  in  a  letter, 
a  lock  of  hair  from  the  right  temple,  and — a — five  dollar 
bill. 

The  precepts  of  even  the  wisest  men,  and  the  laws  of  the 
best  regulated  States,  commanded  or  approved  of  vice.  In 
Babylon  prostitution  was  compulsory  on  every  female.  The 
Carthaginian  law  required  human  sacrifices.  When  Aga- 
thoclas  besieged  Carthage,  two  hundred  children,  of  the 
most  noble  families,  were  murdered  by  the  command  of  the 
senate,  and  three  hundred  citizens  voluntarily  sacrificed 
themselves    to   Saturn. f       The   laws    of  Sparta   required 

*  Turner's  Anglo-Saxons,  b.  vii.  chap.  13. 
t  Diodorus  Siculus,  b.  xx.  chap.  14. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE?  137 

theft,  and  the  murder  of  unhealthy  children.  Those  of 
ancient  Kome  allowed  parents  the  power  of  killing  their 
children,  if  they  pleased.  At  Athens,  the  capital  oF  heathen 
literature  and  philosophy,  it  was  enacted  "  that  infants  which 
appeared  to  be  maimed  should  either  be  killed  or  exposed."* 

Plato,  dissatisfied  with  the  constitution,  made  a  scheme 
of  one  much  better,  whiih  he  has  left  us  in  his  Republic. 
In  this  great  advance  of  society,  this  heathen  millennium, 
we  find  that  there  was  to  be  a  community  of  women  and  of 
property,  just  as  among  our  modern  heathens.  Women's 
rights  were  to  be  maintained  by  having  the  women  trained 
to  war.  Children  were  still  to  be  murdered,  if  convenience 
called  for  it.  And  the  young  children  were  to  be  led  to 
battle  at  a  safe  distance,  "  that  the  young  whelps  might  early 
scent  carnage,  and  be  inured  to  slaughter." 

The  teachings  of  all  these  philosophers  were  immoral. 
He  may  lie,  says  Plato,  who  knows  how  to  do  it.  Pride 
and  the  love  of  popular  applause  were  esteemed  the  best 
motives  to  virtue.  Profane  swearing  was  commanded  by 
the  example  of  all  their  best  writers  and  moralists.  Oaths 
are  frecjuent  in  the  writings  of  Plato  and  Seneca.  The 
gratification  of  the  sensual  appetites  was  openly  taught. 
Aristippus  taught  that  a  wise  man  might  steal  and  commit 
adultery  when  he  could.  Unnatural  crimes  were  vindicated. 
The  last  dread  crime — suicide — was  pleaded  for  by  Cicero 
and  Seneca  as  the  mark  of  a  hero;  and  Demosthenes,  Cato, 
Brutus,  and  Cassius,  carried  the  means  of  self-destruction 
about  them,  that  they  might  not  fall  alive  into  the  hands  of 
their  enemies. 

The  daily  lives  of  these  wisest  of  the  heathen  corresponded 
to  their  teachings,  so  far  at  least  as  vice  was  concerned.  The 
most  notorious  vices,  and  even  unnatural  crimes,  were  prac- 
ticed by  them.     The  reader  of  the  classics  does  not  need  to 


*  Aristotle,  Polit.  lib.  vii.  chap.  17. 


138  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

be  reminded  that  such  vices  are  lauded  in  the  poems  of 
Ovid, and  Horace,  and  Virgil;  that  the  poets  were  rewarded 
and  honored  for  songs  which  would  not  be  tolerated  for  a 
moment  in  the  vilest  theater  of  New  York. 

Recently  some  daily  papers  and  broad-church  preachers 
have  taken  to  the  canonization  of  heathen  saints ;  they  de- 
nounce vigorously  the  bigotry  of  any  who  will  not  open  to 
them  the  gates  of  heaven,  or  who  will,  in  general,  deny  sal- 
vation to  good  heathens.  But  we  do  not  deny  salvation  to 
good  heathens,  or  to  good  Jews,  or  to  good  Mohammedans, 
or  to  anybody  who  is  good.  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons; 
but  in  every  nation,  he  that  feareth  God  and  worketh  right- 
eousness is  accepted  of  him.  Nor  are  we  about  to  usurp 
Peter's  keys,  and  lock  anybody  out  of  heaven,  or  into  it 
either ;  we  are  only  acting  as  jurymen  upon  the  life  and  con- 
duct of  men  held  up  to  our  children  as  noble  examples  of  a 
good  life,  in  their  classics,  by  heathens  like  themselves,  and 
recommended  now  by  Christian  clergymen,  as  fitter  for  the 
kingdom  of  God,  than  bad  Christians ;  which  last  may  be 
very  true,  and  so  much  the  worse  for  the  bad  Christians. 
But  the  question  is  not  to  be  thus  decided  by  comparisons, 
or  by  generalities ;  we  must  have  specified  individual  hea- 
then saints.  When,  however,  we  come  to  look  for  them,  these 
saints  and  heroes  prove  to  be  only  fit  for  the  penitentiary, 
according  to  the  laws  of  any  of  our  States ;  and  were  they 
living  now,  and  behaving  themselves  according  to  their  ac- 
customed habits,  the  best  of  them  would  be  fortunate  if 
they  got  there  before  they  were  tarred  and  feathered 
by  an  outraged  public.  Socrates,  Seneca,  and  the  Emperor 
Marcus  Aurelius,  form  the  stock  specimens  trotted  out  of 
the  stables  of  heathen  morality,  for  the  admiration  and 
reverence  of  Christians  in  this  nineteenth  century.  But  it 
has  been  well. remarked  of  Socrates,  that  no  American  lady 
would  live  with  him  a  year  without  applying  for  a  divorce, 
and  getting  it,  too,  upon  very  sufficient  grounds.     Seneca, 


HAVE  WB  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE  ?  139 

who  wrote  so  beautifully  upon  morals,  was  an  adulterer ; 
and,  moreover,  prostituted  his  pen  to  write  a  defense  of  a 
man  who  murdered  his  mother.  And  Marcus  Aurelius  di- 
rected the  murder  of  thousands  of  innocent  men  and  women, 
causing  young  ladies  to  be  stripped  naked  and  torn  to  pieces 
by  wild  beasts,  in  the  public  amphitheater,  and  others  to  be 
roasted  alive  in  red-hot  iron  chairs,  for  no  other  offense 
but  that  they  avowed  themselves  Christians.  Such  are  these 
boasted  saints  and  heroes  of  heathendom. 

What,  then,  must  the  lives  of  the  vulgar  have  been?  In 
the  very  height  of  Roman  civilization,  Trajan  caused  ten 
thousand  men  to  hew  each  other  to  pieces  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  Roman  people ;  and  noble  ladies  feasted  their 
eyes  on  the  spectacle.  In  the  Augustan  age,  when  the  in- 
vincible armies  of  Rome  gave  law  to  half  the  world,  fathers 
were  in  the  habit  of  mutilating  their  sons  rather  than  see 
them  subjected  to  the  slavery  and  terrible  despotism  of 
their  officers.  What,  then,  must  the  state  of  the  people  of 
the  vanquished  countries  have  been?  Whole  provinces 
were  frequently  given  over  to  fire  and  sword  by  generals 
not  reputed  inhuman ;  and  such  was  the  progress  of  war 
and  anarchy,  and  their  never-failing  accompaniments,  fam- 
ine and  pestilence,  that,  in  the  reign  of  Gallienus,  large 
cities  were  left  utterly  desolate,  the  public  roads  became  un- 
safe from  immense  packs  of  wolves,  and  it  was  computed 
that  one-half  of  the  human  race  perished.  This  was  just 
before  the  toleration  of  Christianity.  God  would  allow  the 
wisest  and  bravest  of  mankind  to  try  the  experiment  of  neg- 
lecting his  gospel  and  living  without  his  revelation,  until  all 
mankind  might  be  convinced  that  such  a  course  is  sui  idal 
to  nations.     "Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish." 

A  brief  reference  to  the  codes  of  morals  which  the  mod- 
ern opposers  of  the  Bible  would  substitute  for  it  in  Chris- 
tian lands  shall  conclude  our  proof  of  the  necessity  of  such 


140  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

a  revelation  of  God's  law  to  man,  as  shall  guide  his  life  to 
peace  and  happiness. 

The  family  is  the  basis  of  the  commonwealth.  Destroy 
family  confidence  and  family  government,  and  you  destroy 
society,  subvert  civil  government,  and  bring  destruction  on 
the  human  race.  Mankind  are  so  generally  agreed  on  this 
subject,  that  adultery,  even  among  heathens,  is  regarded 
and  punished  as  a  crime.  The  whole  school  of  Infidel  writ- 
ers and  anti-Bible  lecturers,  male  and  female,  apologize  for, 
and  vindicate  this  crime.  Lord  Herbert,  the  first  of  the 
English  Deists,  taught  that  the  indulgence  of  lust  and  anger 
is  no  more  to  be  blamed  than  the  thirst  occasioned  by  the 
dropsy,  or  the  drowsiness  produced  by  lethargy.  Mr.  Hobbes 
asserted  that  every  man  has  a  right  to  all  things,  and 
may  lawfully  get  them  if  he  can.  Bolingbroke  taught  that 
man  is  merely  a  superior  animal,  which  is  just  the  modern 
development  theory,  and  that  his  chief  end  is  to  gratify  the 
appetites  and  inclinations  of  the  flesh.  Hume,  whose  argu- 
ment against  miracles  is  so  frequently  in  the  mouths  of 
American  Infidels,  taught  that  adultery  must  be  practiced, 
if  men  would  obtain  all  the  advantages  of  life,  and  that  if 
practiced  frequently,  it  would  by  degrees  come  to  be  thought 
no  crime  at  all — a  prediction  as  true  as  Holy  Writ;  the  ful- 
fillment of  which  hundreds  of  the  citizens  of  Cincinnati  can 
attest,  who  have  heard  a  lecturer  publicly  denounce  the 
Bible  as  an  immoral  book,  and  in  the  same  address  declare 
that  if  a  woman  was  married  to  a  man,  in  her  opinion  of  in- 
ferior development,  it  was  her  duty  to  leave  him  and  live 
with  another.  This  duty  is  by  no  means  neglected,  as  the 
numerous  divorces,  spiritual  marriages,  separations,  and 
elopements  among  this  class  of  perpons,  testify.  Voltaire 
held  that  it  was  not  agreeable  to  policy  to  regard  it  as  a  vice 
in  a  moral  sense.  Rousseau,  a  liar,  a  thief,  and  a  debauched 
profligate,  according  to  his  own  printed  "Confessions,"  held 
the  same  high  opinion  of  the  inner  light  as  our  American 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  IHE  BIBLE  ?  141 

Spiritualists.  ^^ I  have  only  to  consult  myself, ^^  said  he,  ^^  con- 
cerning what  I  do.     All  that  I  feel  to  he  right ,  is  right."^ 

In  fact,  the  purport  of  this  inner  light  doctrine  is  ex- 
actly as  Rousseau  expressed  it,  and  amounts  simply  to  this, 
Do  lohat  you  like. 

On  this  lawless  principle  these  men  acted.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, the  chief  saint  on  the  calendar  of  American  Infidel- 
ity, whose  birthday  is  annually  celebrated  by  a  festival  in 
this  city,  and  in  whose  honor  hundreds  of  men,  who  would 
like  to  be  reputed  decent  citizens,  parade  the  streets  of  Cin- 
cinnati in  solemn  procession — Thomas  Paine — the  author  of 
"The  Ag^  of  Reason,"  as  his  character  is  depicted  by  one 
who  was  his  helper  in  the  work  of  blaspheming  Grod  and  se- 
ducing men,  and  whose  testimony,  therefore,  in  the  eyes  of 
an  Infidel,  is  unimpeachable — William  Carver. 

"  Mr.  Thomas  Paine  :  I  received  your  letter,  dated  the  25th 
ult.,  in  answer  to  mine,  dated  November  21,  and  after  minutely  ex- 
amining its  contents,  I  found  that  you  had  taken  to  the  pitiful  sub- 
terfuge of  lyiuff  for  your  defense.  You  say  that  you  paid  me  four 
dollars  per  week  for  your  board  and  lodging,  during  the  time  you 
were  with  me,  prior  to  the  first  of  June  last ;  which  was  the  day 
that  I  went  up,  by  your  order,  to  bring  you  to  York,  from  New 
Rochelle.  It  is  fortunate  for  me  that  I  have  a  living  evidence  that 
saw  you  give  me  five  guineas,  and  no  more,  in  my  shop,  at  your 
departure  at  that  time ;  but  you  said  you  would  have  given  me 
more,  but  that  you  had  no  more  with  you  at  present.  You  say, 
also,  that  you  found  your  own  liquors  during  the  time  you  boarded 
with  me ;  but  you  should  have  said,  '  I  found  only  a  small  part  of 
the  liquor  I  drank  during  my  stay  with  you ;  this  part  I  purchased 
of  John  Fellows,  which  was  a  demi-john  of  brandy,  containing 
four  gallons,'  and  this  did  not  serve  you  three  weeks.  This  can  be 
proved,  and  I  mean  not  to  say  anything  I  can  not  prove,  for  I  hold 
truth  as  a  precious  jewel.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  you  drank 
one  quart  of  brandy  per  d&j,  at  my  expense,  during  the  different 
times  you  boarded  with  me ;  the  demi-john  above  mentioned  ex- 
cepted, and  the  last  fourteen  weeks  you  were  sick.    Is  not  this  a 


*  Home's  Introduction  of  the  Scriptures,  Vol.  I.  page  25. 


142  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

supply  of  liquor  for  dinner  and  supper."  *  *  *  *  "  I  have  often 
wondered  that  a  French  woman  and  three  children  should  leave 
France  and  all  their  connections,  to  follow  Thomas  Paine  to  Amer- 
ica. Suppose  I  were  to  go  to  my  native  country,  England,  and 
take  another  man's  wife  and  three  children  of  his,  and  leave  my 
wife  and  children  in  this  country,  what  would  be  the  natural 
conclusion  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  hut  that  there  was  some 
criminal  connection  between  the  woman  and  myself?"* 

The  death  of  this  man  was  horrible. 

The  Philadelphia  Presbyterian  says:  "T^fere  is  now  in 
Philadelphia  a  lady  who  saw  Paine  on  his  dying-bed.  She 
informs  us  that  Paine's  physician  also  attended  her  father's 
family  in  the  city  of  New  York,  where  in  her  youth  she  re- 
sided, and  that  on  one  occasion  whilst  at  their  house,  he  pro- 
posed to  her  to  accompany  him  to  the  Infidel's  dwelling, 
which  she  did.  It  was  a  miserable  hovel  in  what  was  then 
Raisin  Street.  She  had  often  seen  Paine  before,  a  drunken 
profligate,  wandering  about  the  streets,  from  whom  the 
children  always  fled  in  terror.  On  entering  his  room  she 
found  him  stretched  on  his  miserable  bed.  His  visage  was 
lean  and  haggard,  and  wore  the  expression  of  great  agony. 
He  expressed  himself  without  reserve  as  to  his  fears  of 
death,  and  repeatedly  called  on  the  name  of  Jesus,  begging 
for  mercy.  The  scene  was  appalling,  and  so  deeply  engraven 
on  her  mind,  that  nothing  could  obliterate  it." — Philadelphia 
Presbi/terian,  March  17,  1857. 

The  physician's  statement  has  been  common,  many  years, 
and  corresponds  with  the  above.  So  do  Grant  Thorburn's 
representations  agree  with  both.  And  the  piece  published 
by  Rev.  Jas.  Inglis  in  his  "Waymarks  in  the  Wilderness," 
which  has  proved  so  distasteful  to  the  Paineites  here,  sub- 
stantially agrees  with  all  the  others.  It  is  only  the  truth- 
fulness of  it  which  is  so  off'ensive.     It  may  be  of  interest  to 


*  Printed  repeatedly  in  New  York  newspapers,  and  given  entire 
in  the  report  of  the  discussion  between  Dr.  Berg  and  Mr.  Barker. 
W.  S.  Young,  Philadelphia,  1854. 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE?  143 

state,  that  the  facts  therein  named  are  the  recollections  of 
old  Dr.  Mo  Clay,  a  Baptist  minister  of  known  power  and  ver- 
acity. The  I'act  of  Paine's  miserable,  and  cowardly,  and 
man-forsaken  end  is  too  true.  Let  no  one  be  foolhardy 
enough  to  follow  them,  rejecting  to  do  it,  a  fourfold  cord  of 
strong  testimony ;  nay,  we  may  add,  a  stronger  cord  of  five- 
fold testimony,  as  Paine's  nurse  testifies  like  the  rest. 

In  the  East  tlie^e  facts  are  so  notorious  that  even  Infidels 
diiown  allegiance  or  attachment  to  Paine,  if  they  wish  to  be 
considered  respectable.  Some  of  the  severest  denuncia- 
tions against  him,  which  we  ever  heard,  have  been  from  In- 
fidels. Indeed  this  is  more  than  plain  from  the  very  fact 
of  all  the  Infidels  having  forsaken  Paine  on  his  death-bed. 
Who  was  his  doctor?  A  Christian.  "Who  was  his  nurse? 
A  Christian?  Who  were  his  most  constant  visitors  and 
sympathizers?  Thorburn,  McClay,  etc..  Christians.  They 
went,  for  mercy's  sake;  Infidels,  having  no  "bowels  of  mer- 
cies," kept  away.  Carver,  Jefi'erson,  etc.,  were  ^ar  from  him 
in  his  extreme  hour. 

The  testimony  of  Mons.  Tronchin,  a  Protestant  physician 
from  Geneva,  who  attended  Voltaire  on  his  death -bed,  was: 
That  to  see  all  the  furies  of  Orestes,  one  only  had  to  be 
present  at  the  death  of  Voltaire.  ("T^owr  voir  toutes  les 
furies  d' Oreste,  il  ny  avait  qua  se  trouver  a  la  mort  de 
Voltaire^)  "Such  a  spectacle,"  he  adds,  "would  benefit 
the  young,  who  are  in  danger  of  losing  the  precious  helps 
of  religion."  The  Marechal  de  Richelieu,  too,  was  so  ter- 
rified at  what  he  saw  that  he  left  the  bedside  of  Voltaire, 
declaring  that  "the  sight  was  too  horrible  for  endurance."* 

And  these  are  the  saints,  and  apostles,  and  heroes  of  In- 
fidelity, to  whose  memories  Infidels  make  orations  and  festi- 
vals, and  whose  writings  are  reprinted  in  scores  of  editions, 

*  Tlie  Occident,  20th  August,  1 874,  San  Francisco. 


144  HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE  ? 

not  only  over  Christendom,  but  even  in  India,  to  teach  man- 
kind how  to  live  and  how  to  die ! 

Such  are  the  lives  and  deaths  of  those  who  denounce  the 
Bible  as  an  immoral  Book,  and  blaspheme  the  Grod  of  the 
Bible  as  too  unholy  to  be  reverenced  or  adored!  "But, 
beloveJ,  remember  ye  the  words  which  were  spoken  before 
of  the  apostles  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ;  how  that  they 
told  you  there  should  be  mockers  in  the  last  time,  who 
should  walk  after  their  own  ungodly  lusts.  These  be  they 
who  separate  themselves,  sensual,  having  not  the  Spirit." 
In  the  Free  Love  Institute  about  to  be  established  in  our 
vicinity,  we  shall  have  the  full  development  of  these  filthy 
principles  and  practices. 

Let  fathers  and  husbands  look  to  this  matter.  Especially 
let  ungodly  men  set  to  work  and  devise  some  law  of  man 
capable  of  binding  those  who  renounce  the  law  of  God,  and 
with  it  all  human  authority.  For  there  can  be  no  law  of 
man,  unless  there  is  a  revealed  law  of  God.  "  What  right," 
says  the  Pantheist,  the  Fourierist,  the  Spiritualist,  the  Athe- 
ist, "what  right  have  you  to  command  me?  Eight  and 
wrong  are  only  matters  of  feeling,  and  your  feelings  are  no 
rule  to  me.  The  will  of  the  majority  is  only  the  law  of 
might,  and  if  I  can  evade  it,  or  overcome  it,  my  will  is  as 
good  as  theirs.  Oaths  are  only  an  idle  superstition ;  there 
is  no  judge,  no  judgment,  no  punishment  for  the  false 
swearer."  Take  away  the  moral  sanction  of  law,  and  the 
sacredness  of  oaths,  and  what  basis  have  you  left  for  any 
government,  save  the  point  of  the  bayonet?  Take  away  the 
revealed  law  of  God,  and  you  leave  not  a  vestige  of  any  au- 
thority to  any  human  law.  "  We  hold  these  truths  to  be 
self-evident,"  said  the  immortal  framers  of  the  basis  of  the 
American  Confederation,  "that  all  men  are  created  equal; 
that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalien- 
able rights."  It  was  well  said.  The  rights  of  God  are  the 
only  basis  of  the  rights  of  man.   One  of  the  most  sagacious 


HAVE  WE  ANY  NEED  OP  THE  BIBLE  ?  145 

of  modern  statesmen  has  borne  his  testimony  to  this  funda- 
mental truth — that  religion  is  the  only  basis  of  social  order 
— in  words  as  trenchant  as  the  guillotine  which  suggested 
them.  "It  is  not,"  says  Napoleon,  "the  mystery  of  incar- 
nation which  I  perceive  in  religion,  but  the  mystery  of  social 
order.  It  attaches  to  heaven  an  idea  of  equality  which  pre- 
vents the  rich  from  being  massacred  by  the  poor."-!^ 

Once  in  modern  time;?,  the  rejectors  of  the  Bible  had  op- 
portunity to  try  the  experiment  of  ruling  a  people  on  a  large 
scale,  and  giving  the  world  a  specimen  of  an  Infidel  Repub- 
lic. You  have  heard  one  of  them  here  express  his  admira- 
tion of  that  government,  and  declare  his  intention  to 
present  a  public  vindication  of  it.  Of  course,  as  soon  as 
practicable,  that  which  they  admire  they  will  imitate,  and 
the  scenes  of  Paris  and  Lyons  will  be  re-enacted  in  Louis- 
ville and  Cincinnati.  Our  Bibles  will  be  collected  and 
burned  on  a  dung-heap.  Death  will  be  declared  an  eternal 
sleep.  Grod  will  be  declared  a  fiction.  Religious  worship 
will  be  renounced ;  the  Sabbath  abolished ;  and  a  prostitute, 
crowned  with  garlands,  will  receive  the  adorations  of  the 
mayors  and  councilmen  of  Cincinnati  and  Newport.  The 
reign  of  terror  will  commence.  The  guillotine  shall  take 
its  place  on  the  Fifth  Street  Market  place.  Proscription 
will  follow  proscription.  Women  will  denounce  their  hus- 
bands, and  children  their  parents,  as  bad  citizens,  and  lead 
them  to  the  ax  ;  and  well-dicssed  ladies,  filled  with  savage 
ferocity,  will  seize  the  mangled  bodies  of  their  murdered 
countrymen  between  their  teeth.  The  Licking  will  be 
choked  with  the  bodies  of  men,  and  the  Ohio  dyed  with 
their  blood;  and  those  whose  infancy  has  sheltered  them 
from  the  fire  of  the  rabble  soldiery  will  be  bayoneted  as 
they  cling  to  the  knees  of  their  destroyers.f     The  common 

*  Ardeches'  Life  of  Napoleon  I.  222. 

t  Home's  Introduction  to  the  Scriptures,  Vol.  I.  page  26,  where 
ample  references  to  cotemporary  French  writers  are  given. 
10 


146  HAVE  WE  ANT  NEED  OF  THE  BIBLE? 

doom  of  man  commuted  for  the  violence  of  the  sword,  the 
bayonet,  the  sucking  boat,  and  the  guillotine,  the  knell  of 
the  nation  tolled,  and  the  world  summoned  to  its  execution 
and  funeral,  will  need  no  preacher  to  expound  the  text, 
Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish. 


CHAPTER   V. 


Who  Wrote  The  New  Testament? 


"  The  salutation  of  Paul  with  mine  own  hand,  which  is  the 
token  in  every  epistle :  so  I  write.  The  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  be  with  you  all.     Amen." — 2  Thess.  iii.  17. 


Religion  rests  not  on  dogmas,  but  on  a  number  of  great 
facts.  In  a  previous  chapter  we  found  one  of  these  to  be, 
that  people  destitute  of  a  revelation  of  God's  will  ever 
have  been,  and  now  are,  ignorant,  miserable,  and  wicked.  If 
it  were  at  all  needful,  we  might  go  on  to  show  that  there 
are  people  in  the  world,  who  have  decent  clothing  and  com- 
forlable  houses,  who  work  well-tilled  farms  and  sub-soil 
plows,  and  reaping  machinery,  who  yoke  powerful  streams 
to  the  mill  whee^,  and  harness  the  iron  horse  to  the  market 
wagon,  who  career  their  floating  palaces  up  the  opposing 
floods,  line  their  coasts  with  flocks  of  white-winged  schoon- 
ers, and  show  their  flags  on  every  coast  of  earth,  who  invent 
and  make  everything  that  man  will  buy,  from  the  brass  but- 
ton, dear  to  the  barbarian,  to  the  iolio  of  the  philosopher, 
erect  churches  in  all  their  towns,  and  schools  in  every  vil- 
lage, who  make  their  blacksmiths  more  learned  than  the 
priests  of  Egypt,  their  Sabbath  scholars  wiser  than  the  phi- 
losophers of  Greece,  and  even  the  criminals  in  their  jails 
more  decent  characters  than  the  sages,  heroes,  and  gods  of 
the  lands  without  the  Bible ;  and  that  these  people  are  the 

people  who  possess  a  Book,  which  they  think  contains  a 

(147) 


148  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  ? 

revelation  from  God,  teaching  them  how  to  live  well ;  which 
Book  they  call  the  Bible.  This  is  the  book  about  which 
we  make  our  present  inquiry,  Who  wrote  it  ? 

The  fact  being  utterly  undeniable,  that  these  blessings 
are  found  among  the  people  who  possess  the  Bible,  and  only 
among  them,  we  at  once,  and  summarily,  dismiss  the  arro- 
gant falsehood  presented  to  prevent  any  inquiry  about  the 
Book,  namely,  that  "Christianity  is  just  like  any  other  su- 
perstition, and  its  sacred  books  like  the  impositions  of  Chi- 
nese, Indian,  or  Mohammedan  impostors.  They,  too,  are 
religious,  and  have  their  sacred  books,  which  they  believe 
to  be  divine."  A  profound  generalization  indeed!  Is  a 
peach-tree  just  like  a  horse-chestnut,  or  a  scrub-oak,  or  a 
honey-locust?  They  are  all  trees,  and  have  leaves  on  them. 
The  Bible  is  just  as  like  the  Yi  King,  or  the  Vedas,  or  the 
Koran,  as  a  Christian  American  is  like  a  Chinaman,  a  Turk, 
or  a  Hindoo.  But  it  is  too  absurd  to  begin  any  discussion 
with  these  learned  Thebans  of  the  relative  merits  of  the 
Bible  as  compared  with  the  Vedas,  and  the  Chinese  Clas- 
sics, of  which  they  have  never  read  a  single  page.  Let  them 
stick  to  what  they  pretend  to  know. 

The  Bible  is  a  great  fact  in  the  world's  history,  known 
alike  to  the  prince  and  the  peasant,  the  simple  and  the  sage. 
It  is  perused  with  pleasure  by  the  child,  and  pondered  with 
patience  by  the  philosopher.  Its  psalms  are  caroled  on  the 
school  green,  cheer  the  chamber  of  sickness,  and  are  chanted 
by  the  mother  over  her  cradle,  by  the  orphan  over  the 
tomb.  Here,  thousands  of  miles  away  from  the  land  of  its 
birth,  in  a  world  undiscovered  for  centuries  after  it  was  fin- 
ished, in  a  language  unknown  alike  at  Athens  and  Jerusa- 
lem, it  rules  as  lovingly  and  as  powerfully  as  in  its  native 
soil.  To  show  that  its  power  is  not  derived  from  race  or 
clime,  it  converts  the  Sandwich  Islands  into  a  civilized  na- 
tion, and  transforms  the  New  Zealand  cannibal  into  a  British 
shipowner,  the  Indian  warrior  into  an  American  editor,  and 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  149 

the  Negro  slave  into  the  President  of  a  free  African  Ke- 
public.  It  has  inspire  1  the  Caffirs  of  Africa  to  build  tele- 
g-aplis,  and  to  print  associated  press  dispatches  in  their 
newspapers;  while  the  Zulus,  one  of  whom  would  have  con- 
verted Bishop  Colenso  from  Christianity,  if  he  had  been  a 
Christian,  are  importing  steel  plows  by  hundreds  every 
year.  It  has  captured  the  enemy's  fortresses,  and  turned 
his  guns.  Lord  Chesterfield's  parlor,  where  an  infidel  club 
met  to  sneer  at  religion,  is  now  a  vestry,  where  the  prayers 
of  the  penitent  are  offered  to  Christ.  Gibbon's  house,  at 
Lake  Lemon,  is  now  a  hotel ;  one  room  of  which  is  devoted 
to  the  sale  of  Bibles.  Voltaire's  printing  press,  from  which 
he  issued  his  infidel  tracts,  has  been  appropriated  to  print- 
ing the  Word  of  God.*  It  does  not  look  as  if  it  had  fin- 
ished its  course  and  ceased  from  its  triumphs.  Translated 
into  the  hundred  and  fifty  languages  spoken  by  nine  hun- 
dred millions  of  men,  carried  by  ten  thousand  heralds  to 
every  corner  of  the  globe,  sustained  by  the  cheerful  contribu- 
tions and  fervent  prayers  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  ar- 
dent disciples,  it  is  still  going  forth  conquering  and  to  con- 
quer. Is  there  any  other  book  so  generally  read,  so  greatly 
loved,  so  zealously  propagated,  so  widely  diffused,  so  uniform 
in  its  results,  and  so  powerful  and  blessed  in  its  influences? 
Do  you  know  any?  If  you  can  not  name  any  book,  no,  nor 
any  thousand  books,  which  in  these  respects  equal  the  Bible 
— then  it  stands  out  clear  and  distinct,  and  separate  from 
all  other  authorship ;  and  with  an  increased  emphasis  comes 
our  question,  Who  wrote  it? 

With  all  these  palpable  facts  in  view,  to  come  to  the  ex- 
amination of  this  question  as  if  we  knew  nothing  about 
them,  or  as  if  knowing  them  well,  we  cared  nothing  at  all 
about  them,  and  were  determined  to  deny  them  their  natu- 


*  The  Family  Christian  Almanac  for  1859,  p.  57,  American  Tract 
Society,  New  York. 


150  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

ral  influence  in  begetting  within  us  a  very  strong  presump- 
tion in  favor  oF  its  divine  origin,  were  to  declare  that  our 
heads  and  hearts  were  alike  closed  against  light  and  love. 
But  to  enter  on  this  inquiry  into  the  origin  of  the  Book 
which  has  produced  such  results,  with  a  preconceived  opin- 
ion that  it  must  be  a  forgery,  and  an  imposition,  the  fruit  of 
a  depraved  heart,  and  a  lying  tongue,  implies  so  much  home- 
born  deceit  that,  till  the  heart  capable  of  such  a  prejudice 
be  completely  changed,  no  reasoning  can  have  any  solid  ful- 
crum of  truth  or  goodness  to  rest  on.  It  is  sheer  folly  to 
talk  of  one's  being  wholly  unprejudiced  in  such  an  inquiry. 
No  man  ever  was,  or  could  be  so.  As  his  sympathies  are 
toward  goodness  and  virtue,  and  the  happiness  of  mankind, 
or  toward  pride  and  deceit,  and  selfishness  and  savageness, 
so  will  his  prejudices  be  for  or  against  the  Bible. 

On  looking  at  the  Bible,  we  find  it  composed  of  a  num- 
ber of  separate  treatises,  written  by  different  writers,  at 
various  times;  some  parts  fifteen  hundred  years  before  the 
others.  We  find,  also,  that  it  treats  of  the  very  beginning 
of  the  world,  before  man  was  made,  and  of  other  matters  of 
which  we  have  no  other  authentic  history  to  compare  with 
it.  Again,  we  find  portions  which  treat  of  events  connected 
in  a  thousand  places  with  the  affairs  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
of  which  we  have  several  credible  histories.  Now,  there  are 
two  modes  of  investigation  open  to  us,  the  dogmatic  and  the 
inductive.  We  may  take  either.  We  may  construct  for 
ourselves,  from  the  most  flimsy  suppositions,  a  metaphysical 
balloon,  inflated  with  self-conceit  into  the  rotundity  of  a 
cosmogony,  according  to  which,  in  our  opinion,  the  world 
should  have  been  made,  and  we  may  paint  it  over  with  the 
figures  of  the  various  animals  and  noble  savages  which 
ought  to  have  sprung  up  out  of  its  fornea,  and  we  may 
stripe  its  history  to  suit  our  notions  of  the  progress  of  such 
a  world,  and  soaring  high  into  the  clouds,  aft<jr  a  little  pre- 
liminary amusement  in  the  discovery  of  eternal  red-hot  fire- 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  ?  151 

mists,  and  condensing  comets,  and  so  forth,  we  may  come 
down  upon  the  summit  of  some  of  this  earth's  mountains, 
say  Ararat,  and  take  a  survey  of  the  Bible  process  of  world- 
making.  Finding  that  the  Creator  of  the  world  had  to 
make  his  materials — a  business  in  which  no  other  world- 
maker  ever  did  engage — and,  further,  that  God's  plan  of 
making  it  by  no  means  corresponds  to  our  patent  process, 
and  that  the  article  is  not  at  all  like  what  we  intend  to  pro- 
duce when  we  go  into  the  business,  and  that  it  does  not 
work  according  to  our  expectations,  we  can  denounce  the 
whole  as  a  very  mean  affair,  and  the  Book  which  describes 
it  as  not  worth  reading.  If  one  wants  some  new  subject 
for  merriment,  and  does  not  mind  making  a  fool  of  himself, 
and  is  not  to  be  terrified  by  old-fashioned  notions  about  God 
Almighty,  and  is  perfectly  confident  that  God  can  tell  him 
nothing  that  he  does  not  know  better  already,  and  merely 
wants  to  see  whether  he  is  not  trying  to  pass  off  old  fables 
upon  wide-awake  people  for  facts — this  dogmatic  plan  will 
suit  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  one  is  tolerably  convinced  that  he 
does  not  know  everything,  not  much  of  the  world  he  lives  in, 
less  of  its  history,  and  nothing  at  all  about  the  best  way  of 
making  it,  and  that  when  it  needs  mending  it  will  not  be 
sent  to  his  workshop ;  that  he  knows  nothing  about  what 
happened  before  he  was  born  unless  what  other  people  tell 
him,  and  that,  though  men  do  err,  yet  all  men  are  not  liars, 
that  all  the  blessings  of  education,  civilization,  lav/  and  lib- 
erty, from  the  penny  primer  to  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  came  to  him  solely  through  the  channel  of 
abundant,  reliable  testimony ;  that  the  only  way  in  which  he 
can  ever  know  anything  beyond  his  eyesight  with  certainty, 
is  to  gather  testimony  about  it,  and  compare  the  evidence, 
and  inquire  into  the  character  of  the  witnesses ;  that  when 
one  has  done  so,  he  becomes  so  satisfied  of  the  truth  of  the 
report  that  he  would  rather  risk  his  life  upon  it  than  upon 


152  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

the  certainty  of  any  mathematical  problem,  or  of  any  scien- 
tific truth,  whatever — that  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hun- 
dred citizens  of  the  United  States  are  a  thousand  times 
more  certain  that  the  Yankees  whipped  the  British  in  1776, 
declared  the  Colonies  free  and  independent  States,  and  made 
Washington  President,  than  they  ever  will  be  that  all  bod- 
ies attract  each  other  directly  as  their  mass,  and  inversely 
as  the  squares  of  their  distances,  that  the  sum  of  the  angles 
of  any  triangle  is  equal  to  two  right  angles,  or  that  the  earth 
is  nearer  the  sun  in  winter  than  in  summer — and  that  cer- 
tainty about  the  Bible  history  is  just  as  attainable,  and  just 
as  reliable,  as  certainty  about  American  history,  if  he  will 
seek  it  in  the  same  way — and  if  he  is  really  desirous  to  know 
how  this  Book  was  written,  which  alone  in  the  world  teaches 
men  how  to  obtain  peace  with  God,  how  to  live  well,  and 
how  to  die  with  a  firm  and  joyful  hope  of  a  resurrection  to 
life  eternal,  and  what  part  of  it  is  easiest  to  prove  either 
true  or  false — then  he  will  take  the  inductive  mode.  He 
will  begin  at  the  present  time,  and  trace  the  history  up  to 
the  times  in  which  the  Book  was  written.  He  will  ascer- 
tain what  he  can  about  that  part  of  it  which  was  last  writ- 
ten— the  New  Testament — and  begin  with  that  part  of  it 
which  lies  nearest  him — the  Epistles. 

By  the  comparison  of  the  documents  themselves,  with  all 
kinds  of  history  and  monuments  which  throw  light  on  the 
period,  he  will  try  to  ascertain  whether  they  are  genuine  or 
not.  And  from  one  well-ascertained  position  he  will  pro- 
ceed to  another,  until  he  has  traversed  the  whole  ground  of 
the  genuineness  of  the  writings,  the  truth  of  the  story,  and 
the  divine  authority  of  the  doctrine. 

This  is  my  plan  of  investigation;  one  thing  at  a  time,  and 
the  nearest  first.  It  is  not  worth  while  to  inquire  whether 
it  be  inspired  by  God,  if  it  be  really  a  forgery  of  impostors; 
nor  whether  the  gospel  story  is  worthy  of  credit,  if  the  only 
book  which  contains  it  be  a  religious  novel  of  the  third  or 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  153 

fourth  century.  We  dismiss  then  the  questions  of  the  in- 
spiration, or  even  the  truth  of  the  New  Testament,  till  we 
have  ascertained  its  authors.  We  take  up  the  Book,  and 
find  that  it  purports  to  be  a  relation  of  the  planting  of  the 
Church  of  Christ,  of  its  laws  and  ordinances,  and  of  the 
life,  death  and  resurrection  of  its  Founder,  written  by  eight 
of  his  companions,  at  various  periods  and  places,  toward  the 
close  of  the  first  century.  There  is  a  general  opinion  among 
all  Christians  that  the  Book  was  composed  then,  and  by 
these  persons.  We  want  to  know  why  they  think  so?  In 
short,  is  it  a  genuine  book,  or  merely  a  collection  of  myths 
with  the  apostles'  names  appended  to  them  by  some  lying 
monks?     Is  it  a  fact,  or  a  forgery? 

In  any  historical  inquiry,  we  want  some  fixed  point  of 
time  from  which  to  take  our  departure ;  and  in  this  case  we 
want  to  know  if  there  is  any  period  of  antiquity  in  which 
undeniably  this  Book  was  in  existence,  and  received  as  gen- 
uine by  Christian  societies.  For  I  will  not  suppose  my 
readers  as  ignorant  as  some  of  those  Infidels  who  allege  that 
it  was  made  by  the  Bible  Society.  It  used  to  be  the  fashion 
with  those  of  them  who  pretended  to  learning,  to  aflSrm  that 
it  was  made  by  the  Council  of  Laodicea,  in  A.  D.  364;  be- 
cause, in  order  to  guard  the  churches  against  spurious 
epistles  and  gospels,  that  Council  published  a  list  of  those 
which  the  apostles  did  actually  write,  which  thenceforth 
were  generally  bound  in  one  volume. 

Before  that  time,  the  four  Gospels  were  aways  bound  in 
one  volume  and  called  "The  Gospel."  The  Acts  of  the  Apos- 
tles and  the  Epistles  universally  and  undoubtedly  known 
to  be  written  by  Paul,  to  the  churches  of  Thessalonica, 
Galatia,  Rome,  Corinth,  Ephesus,  Philippi,  Colosse,  and  to 
Philemon,  a  well-known  resident  of  that  city,  and  those  to 
Timothy  and  Titus,  missionaries  of  world-wide  celebrity, 
the  First  General  Epistle  of  Peter,  and  the  First  General 
Epistle  of  John,  which  were  at  once  widely  circulated  to 


154  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

check  prevailing  heresies — were  bound  in  another  volume 
and  ca-led  "The  Apostle."  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
being  general,  and  anonymous,  i.  e.,  not  bearing  the  name  of 
any  particular  church,  or  person,  to  whom  anybody  whc 
merely  looked  at  it  could  refer  for  proof  of  its  genuineness, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  other  Epistles — was  not  so  soon  knowB 
by  the  European  churches  to  be  written  by  Paul.  The  Gen 
eral  Epistles  of  James,  Jude,  and  the  Second  General  Epis- 
tle of  Peter,  lying  under  the  same  difficulty,  and  besides 
being  very  disagreeable  to  easy-going  Christians,  from  their 
sharp  rebukes  of  hypocrisy,  and  the  Second  and  Third  Epis- 
tles of  John,  from  their  brevity,  and  the  Revelation  of  John, 
being  one  of  the  last  written  of  all  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  the  most  mysterious — were  not  so  generally 
known  beyond  the  churches  where  the  originals  were  depos- 
ited, until  the  other  two  collections  had  been  formed.  They 
were  accordingly  kept  as  separate  books,  and  sometimes 
bound  up  in  a  third  volume  of  apostolical  writings.  Be- 
sides these,  at  the  time  of  the  Council  of  Laodicea,  and  for 
a  long  time  before,  other  books,  written  by  Barnabas,  Clem- 
ent, Polycarp,  and  other  companions  and  disciples  of  the 
apostles,  and  forged  gospels  and  epistles  attributed  by  bere- 
tics  to  the  apostles,  were  circulated  through  the  churches, 
and  read  by  Christians.  The  Council  of  Laodicea  did,  what 
many  learned  men  had  done  before  them ;  it  investigated 
the  evidence  upon  which  any  of  these  books  was  attributed 
to  an  apostle;  and  finding  evidence  to  satisfy  them, 
that  the  Gospel  written  by  Luke  had  the  sanction 
of  the  Apostle  Paul,  that  the  Gospel  of  Mark  was  re- 
vised by  the  Apostle  Peter,  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
was  written  by  Paul,  and  the  other  Epistles  by  John,  Jude, 
James,  and  Peter,  respectively,  and  not  finding  evidence  to 
satisfy  them  about  the  Revelation  of  John,  they  expressed 
their  opinion,  and  the  grounds  of  it,  for  the  information  of 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  ?  155 

the  world.*  Into  these  reasons  we  will  hereafter  inquire, 
for  our  faith  in  Holy  Scjipture  does  not  rest  on  their  can- 
ons. We  are  not  now  asking  what  they  thought,  but  what 
they  did;  and  we  find  that  they  did  criticise  certain  books, 
reported  to  be  written  by  the  apostles  of  J  esus  Christ  some 
three  hundred  years  before,  approve  some,  and  reject  others 
as  spurious,  and  publish  a  list  of  those  they  thought  genu- 
ine. Infidels  admit  this,  and  on  the  strength  of  it  long  as- 
serted that  the  Council  of  Laodicea  made  the  New  Testa- 
ment. At  length  they  became  ashamed  of  the  stupid 
absurdity  of  alleging  that  men  could  criticise  the  claims,  and 
catalogue  the  names  of  books  before  they  were  written ;  and 
they  now  shift  back  the  writing — or  the  authentication  of 
the  New  Testament — for  they  are  not  quite  sure  which, 
though  the  majority  incline  to  the  former — to  the  Emperor 
Constantine,  and  the  Council  of  Nice,  which  met  in  the  year 
325.  Why  they  have  fixed  on  the  Council  of  Nice  is  more 
than  I  can  tell.  They  might  as  well  say  the  Council  of 
Trent,  or  the  Westminster  Assembly,  either  of  which  had 
just  as  much  to  do  with  the  Canon  of  Scripture.  However, 
on  some  vague  hearsay  that  the  Council  of  Nice  and  the 
Emperor  Constantine  made  the  Bible,  hundreds  in  this  city 
are  now  risking  the  salvation  of  their  souls. 

We  have  in  this  assertion,  nevertheless,  as  many  facts  ad- 
mitted as  will  serve  our  present  purpose.  There  did  exist, 
then,  undeniably,  in  the  year  325,  large  numbers  of  Chris- 
tian churches  in  the  Roman  Empire,  sufiiciently  numerous 
to  make  it  politic,  in  the  opinion  of  Infidels,  for  a  candidate 
for  the  empire  to  profess  Christianity;  sufiiciently  powerful 
to  secure  his  success,  notwithstanding  the  desperate  strug- 
gles of  the  heathen  party ;  and  sufficiently  religious,  or  if 
you  like  superstitious,  to  make  it  politic  for  an  emperor  and 
his  politicians  to  give  up  the  senate,  the  court,  the  camp. 


*  Acta  Concitia,  sub  voce  Laodicea,  Canon  iv.    Lardner  vi.  p.  368. 


156  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  ? 

the  cliase,  and  the  theater,  and  weary  themselves  w*th  long 
prayers,  and  longer  speeches,  of  preachers  about  Bible  re- 
ligion. Now  that  is  certainly  a  remarkable  fact,  and  all  the 
more  remarkable  if  we  inquire.  How  came  it  so?  For  these 
men,  preachers,  prince,  and  people,  were  brought  up  to  wor- 
ship Jupiter  and  the  thirty  thousand  gods  of  Olympus, 
after  the  heathen  fashion,  and  to  leave  the  care  of  religion 
to  heathen  priests,  who  never  troubled  their  heads  about 
books  or  doctrines  after  they  had  offered  their  sacrifices.  In 
all  the  records  of  the  world  there  is  no  instance  of  a  general 
council  of  heathen  priests  to  settle  the  religion  of  their 
people.  How  happens  it  then  that  the  human  race  has  of 
a  sudden  waked  up  to  such  a  strange  sense  of  the  folly  of 
idolatry  and  the  value  of  religion  ?  The  Council  of  Nice, 
and  the  Emperor  Constantine,  and  his  counselors,  making  a 
Bible  is  a  proof  of  a  wonderful  revolution  in  the  world's  re- 
ligion ;  a  phenomenon  far  more  surprising  than  if  the  Sec- 
retaries of  State,  and  the  Senate,  and  President  Grant  should 
leave  the  Capital  to  post  off  to  London,  to  attend  the  meet- 
ings of  a  Methodist  Conference,  assembled  to  make  a  hymn 
book.  Now  what  is  the  cause  of  this  remarkable  conver- 
sion of  prince,  priests,  and  people?  How  did  they  all  get 
religion?  How  did  they  get  it  so  suddenly?  How  did  they 
get  so  much  of  it? 

The  Infidel  gives  no  answer,  except  to  tell  us-!^  that  the 
austerity,  purity,  and  zeal  of  the  first  Christians,  their  good 
disc'pline,  their  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body  and 
the  general  judgment,  and  their  persuasion  that  Christ  and 
his  apostles  wrought  miracles,  had  made  a  great  many  con- 
verts. This  is  just  as  if  I  inquired  how  a  great  fire  origin- 
ated, and  you  should  tell  me  that  it  burned  fast  because  it 
was  very  hot.  What  I  want  to  know  is,  how  it  happened 
that  these  licentious  Greeks,  and  Romans,  and  Asiatics,  be- 


*  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall,  II.  p.  267. 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  157 

came  austere  and  pure;  how  these  frivolous  philosophers 
suddenly  became  so  zealous  about  religion;  what  implanted 
the  belief  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body  and  of  the  judg- 
ment to  come  in  the  skeptical  minds  of  these  heathen  scoff- 
ers; and  how  did  the  pagans  of  Italy,  Egypt,  Spain,  Ger- ' 
many,  Britain,  come  to  believe  in  the  miracles  of  one  who 
lived  hundreds  of  years  before,  and  thousands  of  miles  away, 
or  to  care  a  straw  whether  the  written  accounts  of  them  were 
true  or  false?  According  to  the  Infidel  account,  the  Coun- 
cil of  Nice,  and  the  Emperor  Constantine's  Bible-making,  is 
a  most  extraordinary  business — a  phenomenon  without  any 
natural  cause,  and  they  will  allow  no  supernatural — a  greater 
miracle  than  any  recorded  in  the  Bible. 

If  we  inquire,  however,  of  the  parties  attending  that 
Council,  what  the  state  of  the  case  is,  we  shall  learn  that 
they  believed — whether  truly  or  erroneously  we  are  not 
now  inquiring — but  they  believed,  that  a  teacher  sent  from 
God,  had  appeared  in  Palestine  two  hundred  and  ninety 
years  before,  and  had  taught  this  religion  which  they  had 
embraced ;  had  performed  wonderful  miracles,  such  as  open- 
ing the  eyes  of  the  blind,  healing  lepers,  and  raising  the 
dead;  that  he  had  been  put  to  death  by  the  Roman  Gover- 
nor, Pontius  Pilate,  had  risen  again  from  the  dead,  had 
spoken  to  hundreds  of  people,  and  had  gone  out  and  in 
among  them  for  six  weeks  after  his  resurrection;  that  he 
had  ascended  up  through  the  air,  to  heaven,  in  the  sight  of 
numbers  of  witnesses,  and  had  promised  that  he  would  come 
a^ain  in  the  clouds  of  heaven,  to  raise  the  dead,  and  to 
judge  every  man  according  to  his  works;  that  before  he 
went  away  he  appointed  twelve  of  his  intimate  companions 
to  teach  his  religion  to  the  world,  giving  them  power  to 
work  miracles  in  proof  of  their  divine  commission,  and  re- 
quiring mankind  to  hear  them  as  they  would  hear  him ;  that 
they  and  their  followers  did  so,  in  spite  of  persecutions, 
sufferings,  and  death,  with  so  much  success,  that  immense 


158  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

numbers  were  persuaded  to  give  up  idolatry  and  its  filthi- 
ness,  and  to  profess  Christianity  and  its  holiness,  and  to 
brave  the  fury  of  the  heathen  mob,  and  the  vengeance  of 
the  Roman  law ;  that  a  difference  of  opinion  having  arisen 
among  them  as  to  whether  this  teacher  was  an  angel  from 
heaven,  or  God,  whether  they  should  pray  and  sing  psalms . 
to  Him,  as  Athanasius  and  his  party  believed,  or  only  give 
Him  some  lesser  honor  as  Arius  and  his  party  believed,  and 
this  difference  making  all  the  difference  between  idolatry  on 
the  one  hand,  and  impiety  on  the  other,  and  so  involving 
their  everlasting  salvation  or  damnation,  they  had  embraced 
the  first  opportunity  after  the  cessation  of  persecution,  and 
the  accession  of  the  first  Christian  Emperor,  to  assemble 
three  hundred  and  eighteen  of  their  most  learned  clergy- 
men, of  both  sides,  and  from  all  countries  between  Spain 
and  Persia,  to  discuss  these  solemn  questions;  and  that, 
through  the  whole  of  the  discussions,  both  sides  appealed 
to  the  writings  of  the  apostles,  as  being  then  well  known, 
and  of  unquestioned  authority  with  every  one  who  held  the 
Christian  name.  These  facts,  being  utterly  indisputable,  are 
acknowledged  by  all  persons,  Infidel  or  Christian,  at  all  ac- 
quainted with  history.* 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  at 
the  Council  of  Nice  well  known  to  the  whole  world ;  and 
the  Council,  so  far  from  giving  any  authority  to  them,  bow- 
ing to  theirs — both  Arian  and  Orthodox  with  one  consent 
acknowledging  that  the  whole  Christian  world  received  them 
as  the  writings  of  the  apostles  of  Christ.  There  were  ven- 
erable men  of  fourscore  and  ten  at  that  Council ;  if  these 
books  had  been  first  introduced  in  their  lifetime,  they  must 
have  known  it.     There  were  men  there  whose  parents  had 

■*•  The  original  authorities  may  be  found  collected  in  the  fourth 
volume  of  Lardner's  Credibility  of  the  Gospel  History;  abstracts 
of  them,  with  ample  references,  in  Mosheim  and  Neander's  Eccle- 
siastical Histories,  and  in  Stanley's  Eastern  Church. 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  159 

heard  the  Scriptures  read  in  church  from  their  childhood, 
and  so  could  not  be  imposed  upon  with  a  new  Bible.  The 
New  Testament  could  not  be  less  than  three  generations  old, 
else  one  or  other  of  the  disputants  would  have  exposed  the 
novelty  of  its  introduction,  from  his  own  information.  The 
Council  of  Nice,  then,  did  not  make  the  New  Testament. 
It  was  a  book  well  known,  ancient,  and  of  undoubted  au- 
thority among  all  Christians,  ages  before  that  Council.  The 
existence  of  the  New  Testament  Scriptures,  then,  ages  before 
the  Council  of  Nice,  is  a  great  fact. 

We  next  take  up  the  assertions,  propounded  with  a  show 
of  learning,  that  the  books  of  the  New  Testament,  and  es- 
pecially the  Gospels,  were  not  in  use,  and  were  not  known 
till  the  third  century;  that  they  are  not  the  productions  of 
contemporary  writers;  that  the  alleged  ocular  testimony  or 
proximity  in  point  of  time  of  the  sacred  historians  to  the 
events  recorded  is  mere  assumption,  originating  in  the  titles 
which  Biblical  books  bear  in  our  canon;  that  we  stand  here 
(in  the  gospel  history),  upon  purely  mythical  and  poetical 
ground ;  and  that  the  Gospels  and  Epistles  are  a  gradually 
formed  collection  of  myths,  having  little  or  no  historic 
reality.  So  Strauss,  Eichorn,  DeWette,  and  their  disciples 
here,  attempt  to  set  aside  the  New  Testament.  In  plain 
English,  it  is  a  collection  of  forgeries. 

These  assertions  are  absurd.  In  the  hundred  years  be- 
tween the  death  of  the  apostles,  and  the  beginning  of  the 
third  century,  there  was  not  time  to  form  a  mythology.  The 
times  of  Trajan's  persecution,  and  that  of  the  philosophic 
Aurelius,  and  the  busy  bustling  age  of  Severus,  were  not  the 
times  for  such  a  business.  Bigoted  Jews  would  not,  and 
could  not,  have  made  such  a  character  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth ; 
and  the  philosophers  of  that  day,  Celsus  and  Porphyry, 
for  instance,  hated  it  when  presented  to  them  as  heartily 
as  either  Strauss  or  Paine.  There  were  not  wanting  thou- 
sands of  enemies,  able  and  willing,  to  expose  such  a  forgery. 


160  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

The  aspect  and  character  of  the  gospel  narrative  are  to- 
tally unlike  those  of  mythologies.  Hear  the  verdict  of  one 
who  confessedly  stands  at  the  head  of  the  roll  of  oriental 
historians:  "In  no  single  respect — if  we  except  the  fact 
that  it  is  miraculous — has  that  story  a  mythical  character. 
It  is  a  single  story,  told  without  variations ;  whereas  myths 
are  fluctuating  and  multiform:  it  is  blended  inextricably 
with  the  civil  history  of  the  times,  which  it  everywhere  re- 
ports with  extraordinary  accuracy ;  whereas  myths  distort 
or  supersede  civil  history :  it  is  full  of  prosaic  detail,  which 
myths  studiously  eschew :  it  abounds  with  practical  instruc- 
tion of  the  simplest  and  purest  kind ;  whereas  myths  teach  by 
allegory.  Even  in  its  miraculous  element  it  stands  to  some 
extent  in  contrast  with  all  mythologies,  where  the  marvel- 
ous has  ever  a  predominant  character  of  grotesqueness 
which  is  absent  from  New  Testament  miracles.  (This  Strauss 
himself  admits,  Lcbcn  Jesu,  1-67.)  Simple  earnestness, 
fidelity,  painstaking  accuracy,  pure  love  of  truth,  are  the 
most  patent  characteristics  of  the  New  Testament  writers, 
who  evidently  deal  with  facts,  not  with  fancies,  and  are  em- 
ployed in  relating  a  history,  not  in  developing  an  idea.  They 
write  that  '  we  may  know  the  certainty  of  the  things  which 
are  most  surely  believed '  in  their  day.  They  '  bear  record 
of  what  they  have  seen  and  heard,'  I  know  not  how  stronger 
words  could  have  been  used  to  prevent  the  notion  of  that 
plastic,  growing  myth  which  Strauss  conceives  to  have  been 
in  apostolic  times."* 

The  character  of  Christ  exhibited  in  the  Grospels  is  the 
contrary  of  that  of  the  heroes  of  mythology;  as  contrary 
as  holiness  is  to  sin.  The  invention  of  such  a  character  by 
any  man,  or  by  the  wisest  set  of  men  who  ever  lived,  would 
have  been  a  miracle  nearly  as  great  as  the  existence  of  such 
a  person.     When  the  character  of  Christ  was  presented  to 


♦  Kawlinson's  Historical  Evidences,  pago  227. 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  161 

the  wisest  men  of  the  Greeks,  and  Romans,  and  Hebrews,  so 
far  from  admiring  him  as  a  hero,  they  crucified  him  as  an  im- 
postor, and  persecuted  the  preachers  of  his  gospel.  There 
was  nothing  mythical  in  the  ten  persecutions;  these  at  least 
were  hard  historical  facts.  Every  line  of  examination  of 
time,  place,  and  circumstances  proves  the  falsehood  of  the 
mythical  theory,  and  establishes  the  truth  of  the  gospel 
history. 

The  authenticity  of  the  gospel  history,  and  of  the  Apos- 
tolic Epistles  is  confirmed  by  the  testimony  of  their  ene- 
mies. It  is  a  well-authenticated  and  undeniable  fact,  that, 
in  the  close  of  the  second  century,  Celsus,  an  Epicurean 
philosopher,  wrote  a  work  against  Christianity,  entitled,  "The 
Word  of  Truth,"  in  which  he  quotes  passages  from  the  New 
Testament,  and  so  many  of  them,  that  from  the  fragments 
of  his  work  which  remain,  we  could  gather  all  the  principal 
facts  of  the  birth,  teaching,  miracles,  death,  and  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus  Christ,  if  the  New  Testament  should  be  lost. 
If  Paine  quotes  the  New  Testament  to  ridicule  it,  no  man 
can  deny  that  such  a  book  was  in  existence  at  the  time  he 
wrote.  If  he  takes  the  pains  to  write  a  book  to  confute  it, 
it  is  self-evident  that  it  is  in  circulation,  and  possessed  of 
influence.  So  Celsus'  attempt  to  reply  to  the  Gospels,  and 
his  quotations  from  them,  are  conclusive  proofs  that  these 
books  were  generally  circulated  and  believed,  and  held  to 
be  of  authority  at  the  time  he  wrote.  Further,  he  shows 
every  disposition  to  present  every  argument  which  could 
possibly  damage  the  Christian  cause.  In  fact,  our  modern 
Infidels  have  done  little  more  than  serve  up  his  old  objec- 
tions. Now  nothing  could  have  served  his  purpose  better 
than  to  prove  that  the  records  of  the  history  of  Christ  were 
forgeries  of  a  late  date.  This  would  have  saved  him  all 
further  trouble,  and  settled  the  fate  of  Christianity  conclu- 
sively. He  had  every  opportunity  of  ascertaining  the  fact, 
11 


162  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

living,  as  he  did,  so  near  the  times  and  scenes  of  the  gospel 
history,  and  surrounded  by  heretics  and  false  Christians,  who 
would  gladly  have  given  him  every  information.  But  he 
never  once  intimates  the  least  suspicion  of  such  a  thing — 
never  questions  the  Gospels  as  books  of  history — nor  denies 
the  miracles  recorded  in  them,  but  attributes  them  to  magic  * 
Here,  then,  we  have  testimony  as  acceptable  to  an  Infidel  as 
that  of  Strauss  or  Voltaire — in  fact,  utterly  undeniable  by 
any  man  of  common  sense — that  the  New  Testament  was 
well  known  and  generally  received  by  Christians  as  authori- 
tative, when  Celsus  wrote  his  reply  to  it,  in  the  end  of  the 
second  century.  If  it  was  a  forgery,  it  was  undoubtedly  a 
forgery  of  old  standing,  if  he  could  not  detect  it. 

But  we  will  go  back  a  step  farther,  and  prove  the  antiquity 
of  the  New  Testament  by  the  testimony  of  another  enemy, 
two  generations  older  than  Celsus.  The  celebrated  heretic, 
Marcion,  lived  in  the  beginning  of  the  second  century,  when 
he  had  the  best  opportunity  of  discovering  a  forgery  in  the 
writings  of  the  New  Testament,  if  any  such  existed;  he 
was  excommunicated  by  the  Church,  and  being  greatly  en- 
raged thereat,  had  every  disposition  to  say  the  worst  he 
could  about  it.  He  traveled  all  the  way  from  Sinope  on  the 
Black  Sea,  to  Rome,  and  through  Galatia,  Bithynia,  Asia 
Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy,  the  countries  where  the  apostles 
preached,  and  the  churches  to  which  they  wrote,  but  never 
found  any  one  to  suggest  the  idea  of  a  forgery  to  him.  He 
affirmed  that  the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  those  of  James  and  Peter,  and  the  whole  of  the 
Old  Testament,  were  books  only  for  Jews,  and  published  a 
new  and  altered  edition  of  the  Gospel  of  Luke,  and  ten 
Epistles  of  Paul,  for  the  use  of  his  sect.f  We  have  thus 
the  most  undoubted  evidence,  even  the  testimony  of  an  en- 


*  Origen  Contra  Celsum,  passim, 
t  Lardner,  Vol.  IX.  page  358. 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  163 

emy,  that  these  books  were  in  existence,  and  generally  re- 
ceived as  apostolical  and  authoritative  by  Christians,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  second  century,  or  within  twenty  years  of 
the  last  of  the  apostles,  and  by  the  churches  to  which  they 
had  preached  and  written. 

The  only  remaining  conceivable  cavil  against  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  is :  "  That  they  bear 
internal  evidence  of  being  collections  of  fragments  written 
by  different  persons — and  are  probably  merely  traditions  com- 
mitted to  writing  by  various  unknown  writers,  and  afterward 
collected  and  issued  to  the  churches  under  the  names  of  the 
apostles,  for  the  sake  of  greater  authority."  This  theory 
being  received  as  gospel  by  several  learned  men,  has  fur- 
nished matter  for  lengthy  discussions  as  to  the  sources  of 
the  four  Gospels.  Translated  into  English,  it  amounts  to 
this,  that  Brown,  Smith,  and  Jones  wrote  out  a  number  of 
essays  and  anecdotes,  and  persuaded  the  churches  of  Ephe- 
sus,  Jerusalem,  Antioch,  Corinth,  and  the  rest,  to  receive 
them  as  the  writings  of  their  ministers,  who  had  lived  for 
years,  or  were  then  living,  among  them ;  and  on  the  strength 
of  that  notion  of  their  being  the  writings  of  the  apostles, 
to  govern  their  whole  lives  by  these  essays,  and  lay  down 
their  lives  and  peril  their  souls'  salvation  on  the  truth  of 
these  anecdotes.  As  though  they  could  not  tell  whether 
such  documents  were  forgeries  or  not ! 

It  is  almost  incredible  how  ignorant  dreaming  book-worms 
are  of  the  common  business  of  life.  Most  of  my  readers 
will  laugh  at  the  idea  of  a  serious  answer  to  such  a  quibble. 
Nevertheless,  for  the  sake  of  those  whose  inexperience  may 
be  abused  by  the  authority  of  learned  names,  I  will  show 
them  that  the  primitive  Christians,  supposing  them  able  to 
read,  could  know  whether  their  ministers  did  really  write 
the  books  and  letters  which  they  received  from  them. 

If  you  go  into  the  Citizens'  Bank,  you  will  find  a  large 
folio  volume  lying  on  the  counter,  and  on  looking  at  it  you 


164  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

will  see  that  it  is  filled  with  men's  names,  in  their  own  hand- 
writing, and  that  no  two  of  them  are  exactly  alike.  Every 
person  who  has  any  business  to  transact  with  the  bank  is 
requested  to  write  his  name  in  the  book;  and  when  his 
check  comes  afterward  for  payment,  the  clerk  can  tell  at  a 
glance  if  the  signature  is  the  same  as  that  of  which  he  has 
a  single  specimen.  If  there  has  been  no  opportunity  for 
him  to  become  personally  acquainted  with  the  bank,  as  in 
case  of  a  foreigner  newly  arrived,  he  brings  letters  of  intro- 
duction from  some  well-known  mutual  friend,  or  is  accom- 
panied by  some  respectable  citizen,  who  attests  his  identity. 
Business  men  have  no  difficulty  whatever  in  ascertaining 
the  genuineness  of  documents.  It  is  only  when  people  want 
to  dispute  Holy  Scripture  that  they  give  up  common  sense. 
Holy  Scripture  was  known  to  be  the  genuine  writing  of 
the  apostles,  just  in  the  same  way  as  any  other  writing  was 
known  to  be  genuine;  only  the  churches  who  received  the 
writings  of  the  apostles  had  ten  thousand  times  better  se- 
curity against  forgery  than  any  bank  in  the  Union.  In  one 
of  the  first  letters  Paul  writes  to  the  churches — the  second 
letter  to  the  Thessalonians — to  whom  he  had  been  preach- 
ing only  a  few  weeks  before,  sent  from  Athens,  distant  only 
some  two  days'  journey,  full  of  allusions  to  their  afiairs, 
commands  how  to  conduct  themselves  in  the  business  of 
their  workshops,  as  well  as  in  the  devotions  of  the  church, 
and  explanations  of  some  misunderstood  parts  of  a  former 
letter  sent  by  the  hand  of  a  mutifal  friend — he  formally 
gives  them  his  signature,  for  the  purpose  of  future  refer- 
ence, and  comparison  of  any  document  which  might  pur- 
port to  come  from  him,  with  that  specimen  of  his  autograph. 
He  gives  not  the  name  merely,  but  his  apostolic  benediction 
also,  in  his  own  handwriting :  The  salutation  of  me  Paul  with 
mine  own  hand,  which  is  the  token  in  every  epistle :  so  I  write. 
The  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  he  with  you  all.  Amen. 
It  shows  the  heart  of  an  apostle  of  Christ;  but  what  con- 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  ?  165 

cerns  the  present  question  is  the  remark,  which  every  busi- 
ness man  will  in  a  moment  appreciate,  how  immensely  the 
addition. of  these  two  lines  adds  to  the  security  against  forg- 
ery. It  is  a  very  hard  thing  to  forge  a  signature,  but  give 
a  business  man  two  lines  of  any  man's  writing  besides  that, 
and  he  is  perfectly  secure  against  imposition.* 

The  churches  to  which  the  Epistles  were  written,  and  to 
which  the  Gospels  were  delivered,  consisted  largely  of  bus- 
iness men,  of  merchants  and  traders,  tent  makers  and  copper- 
smiths, city  chamberlains,  and  officers  of  Caesar's  household, 
and  the  like.  Does  any  one  think  such  men  could  not  tell 
the  handwriting  of  their  minister,  who  had  lived  among 
them  for  years ;  or  that  men  who  were  risking  their  lives 
for  the  instructions  he  wrote  them,  would  care  less  about 
the  genuineness  of  the  documents,  than  you  do  about  the 
genuineness  of  a  ten  dollar  check  ?  I  am  not  as  long  in  this 
city  as  Paul  was  in  Ephesus,  nor  one  fourth  of  the  time 
that  John  lived  there,  yet  I  defy  all  the  advocates  of  the 
mythical  theory  of  Germany,  and  all  their  disciples  here,  to 
write  a  myth  half  as  long  as  this  essay,  and  impose  it  on  the 
elders  and  members  of  my  church  as  my  writing.  Let  it 
only  be  presented  in  manuscript  to  the  congregation — there 
was  no  printing  in  Paul's  days— and  in  five  minutes  a  dozen 
members  of  the  church  will  detect  the  forgery,  even  if  I 
should  hold  my  peace.  And  were  I  to  leave  on  a  mission 
to  China  or  India,  and  write  letters  to  the  church,  would 
any  of  these  business  men,  who  have  seen  my  writing,  have 
the  least  hesitation  in  recognizing  it  again  ?  Do  you  think 
anybody  could  forge  a  letter  as  from  me,  and  impose  it  on 
them  ?  What  an  absurdity,  then,  to  suppose  that  anybody 
could  write  a  gospel  or  epistle,  and  get  all  the  members  of 
a  large  church  to  believe  that  an  Apostle  wrote  it.  The 
first  Christians,  then,  were  absolutely  certain  that  the  docu- 

*ln  fact,  some  persons  were  trying  to  impose  a  letter,  "as  from 
us, "  containing  declarations,  that  the  day  of  Christ  was  upon  them. 


16§  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

ments  which  they  received  as  apostolic,  were  really  so.  The 
Church  of  Rome  could  attest  the  Epistle  to  them,  and  the 
Gospels  of  3Iark  and  Luke  written  there.  The  Church  of 
Ephesus  could  attest  the  Epistle  to  them,  and  the  Gospel, 
and  Letters,  and  Revelation  of  John  written  there.  And  so 
on  of  all  the  other  churches ;  and  these  veritable  autographs 
were  long  preseryed.  Says  Tertullian,  who  was  ordained 
A.  D.  192 :  "  Well,  if  you  be  willing  to  exercise  your  cur- 
iosity profitably  in  the  business  of  your  salvation,  visit  the 
apostolical  churches  in  which  the  very  chairs  of  the  apos- 
tles still  preside — in  which  their  authentic  letters  them- 
selves are  recited  (apud  quae  ipsce  authenticoe  literoe  eorum 
recitantur),  sounding  forth  the  voice  and  representing  the 
countenance  of  each  one  of  them.  Is  Achaia  near  you,  you 
have  Corinth.  If  you  are  not  far  from  Macedonia,  you  have 
Philippi,  you  have  Thessalonica.  If  you  can  go  to  Asia, 
you  have  Ephesus ;  but  if  you  are  near  to  Italy,  you  have 
Rome."  There  can  not  be  the  least  doubt  about  the  pre- 
servation of  documents  for  a  far  longer  time  than  from  Paul 
to  Tertullian  -  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  I  hold  in  my 
hand  a  Bible,  the  family  Bible  of  the  Gibsons — printed  in 
1599 — two  hundred  and  fifty-seven  years  old,  in  perfect 
preservation ;  and  we  have  manuscripts  of  the  Scriptures 
twelve  to  fourteen  hundred  years  old,  like  the  Sinaitic  Codex, 
perfectly  legible. 

They  were  moreover  directed  to  be  publicly  read  in  the 
churches,  and  they  were  publicly  read  every  Lords  day. 
Is  it  credible  that  an  impostor  would  direct  his  forgery  to 
be  publicly  read  ?  If  the  epistle  was  publicly  read  during 
Paul's  lifetime,  that  public  reading  in  the  hearing  of  the 
men  who  could  so  easily  disprove  its  genuineness,  was  con- 
clusive proof  to  all  who  heard  it,  that  they  knew  it  to  be 
the  genuine  writing  of  the  Apostle.  The  primitive  churches 
then  had  conclusive  proof  of  the  genuineness  of  the  Apos- 
tolic Epistles  and  Gospels. 


WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT?  1G7 

Tlie  only  difSculty  which  now  remains  is  the  objection 
that  they  might  have  been  corrupted  by  alterations  and 
interpolations  by  monks,  in  later  times.  We  have  two  se- 
curities against  such  corruptions,  in  the  way  these  documents 
were  given,  and  the  nature  of  their  contents.  They  were 
sacred  heirlooms,  and  they  were  public  documents.  Could 
you,  or  could  any  man,  have  permission  to  alter  the  original 
copy  of  Washington's  Farewell  Address?  Would  not  the 
man  who  should  attempt  such  sacrilege  be  torn  in  a  thou- 
sand pieces?  But  Washington  will  never  be  an  object  of 
such  veneration  as  John,  nor  will  his  Farewell  Address  ever 
compare  in  importance  with  Paul's  Farewell  Letter  to  the 
Philippians.  Besides,  these  Gospels  and  Letters  were  public 
documents,  containing  the  records  of  laws,  in  obedience  to 
which  men  are  daily  crossing  their  inclinations,  enduring 
the  mockery  of  their  neighbors,  losing  their  money,  and  en- 
dangering their  lives.  They  contained  the  proofs  and  prom- 
ises of  that  religious  faith  in  God  and  hope  of  heaven,  for 
the  sake  of  whih  they  suffered  such  things.  Is  it  credible 
that  they  would  allow  them  to  be  altered  and  corrupted? 
You  might  far  inore  rationally  talk  of  altering  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  or  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  Translated  into  different  languages — transported 
into  Britain,  Germany,  France,  Spain,  Italy,  Greece,  Turkey, 
Carthage,  Egypt,  Parthia,  Persia,  India,  and  China — com- 
mitted to  memory  by  children,  and  quoted  in  the  writings 
of  Christian  authors  of  the  first  three  centuries,  to  such  an 
extent,  that  we  can  gather  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament, 
except  twenty-six  verses,  from  their  writings — appealed  to 
as  authority  by  heretics  and  orthodox  in  controversy — and 
publicly  read  in  the  hearing  of  tens  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
every  Sabbath  day  in  worship — we  are  a  thousand  times 
more  certain  that  the  New  Testament  has  not  been  cor- 
rupted, than  we  are  that  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
is  genuine. 


168  WHO  WROTE  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT? 

On  this  ground  then  we  plant  ourselves.  The  whole  story 
of  a  late  and  gradual  formation  of  the  New  Testament,  or, 
in  plain  English,  of  its  forgery,  stands  out  as  an  unmitigated 
falsehood  in  the  eyes  of  every  man  capable  of  writing  his  own 
name.  The  first  churches  could  not  be  deceived  with  for- 
geries for  apostolic  writings.  Nor  could  they,  if  they  would, 
allow  these  writings  to  be  corrupted.  Be  they  true  or  false, 
fact  or  fiction,  the  books  of  the  New  Testament  are  the 
words  of  the  Apostles  of  our  Lord  and  Savior  Jesus  Christ. 
In  the  next  chapter  we  will  inquire  into  the  truth  of  their 
story. 


CHAPTER    VI. 


Ts  The   Gospel  Fact  or  Fable 


"For  they  themselves  show  of  us  what  manner  of  entering  in  we 
had  unto  you,  and  how  ye  turned  to  G-od  from  idols,  to  serve  the 
living  and  true  God ;  and  to  wait  for  his  Son  from  heaven,  whom 
he  raised  from  the  dead,  even  Jesus,  which  delivered  us  from  the 
wrath  to  come." — 1  Thess.  i.  9,  10. 


In  the  last  chapter  we  ascertained  that  the  Gospels  and 
Epistles  were  not  forgeries  of  some  nameless  monks  of  the 
third  century — that  the  shopkeepers,  silversmiths,  tent- 
makers,  coppersmiths,  tanners,  physicians,  senators,  town 
councilors,  officers  of  customs,  city  treasurers,  and  nobles 
of  Caesar's  household,  in  Rome,  Antioch,  Ephesus,  Corinth, 
Athens,  and  Alexandria,  could  no  more  be  imposed  upon  in 
the  matter  of  documents,  attested  by  the  well-known  signa- 
tures of  their  beloved  ministers,  than  you  could  by  forged 
letters  or  sermons  purporting  to  come  from  your  own  pastor 
— and  that  the  documents  which  they  believed  to  contain 
the  directory  of  their  lives,  and  the  charter  of  that  salva- 
tion which  they  valued  more  than  their  lives,  which  they 
read  in  their  churches,  recited  at  their  tables,  quoted  in 
their  writings,  appealed  to  in  their  controversies,  translated 
into  many  languages,  and  dispersed  into  every  part  of  the 
known  world,  they  neither  would,  nor  could,  corrupt  or 
falsify. 

The  genuineness  of  the  copies  of  the  New  Testament, 
which  we  now  possess,  is  abundantly  proved  by  the  compar- 

(100) 


170  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

ison  of  over  two  thousand  manuscripts,  from  all  parts  of  the 
world;  scrutinized  during  a  period  of  nearly  a  hundred 
years,  by  the  most  critical  scholar^,  so  accurately  that  the 
variations  of  such  thing;  as  wouLl  correspond  to  the  cross- 
ing of  a  t,  or  the  dotting  of  an  i,  in  English,  have  been  care- 
fully enumerated;  yet  the  result  of  the  whole  of  this 
searching  scrutiny  has  been  merely  the  suggestion  of  a  score 
of  unimportant  alterations  in  the  received  text  of  the  seven 
thousand  nine  hundred  and  fifty-nine  verses  of  the  New 
Testament.  This  is  a  fact  utterly  unexampled  in  the  his- 
tory of  manuscripts.  There  are  but  six  manuscripts  of  the 
Comedies  of  Terence,  and  these  have  not  been  copied  once 
for  every  thousand  times  the  New  Testament  has  been  tran- 
scribed, yet  there  are  thirty  thousand  variations  found  in 
these  six  manuscripts,  or  an  average  of  five  thousand  for 
each,  and  many  of  them  seriously  affect  the  sense.  The 
average  number  of  variations  in  the  manuscripts  of  the 
New  Testament  examined,  is  not  quite  thirty  for  each,  in- 
cluding all  the  trivialities  already  noticed. 

We  are,  then,  by  the  special  providence  of  God,  now  as 
undoubtedly  in  possession  of  genuine  copies  of  the  Gospels 
and  Epistles,  written  by  the  companions  of  Jesus,  as  we  are 
of  genuine  copies  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
and  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  These  are  historic 
documents,  of  well-established  genuineness  and  antiquity, 
which  we  now  proceed  to  examine  as  to  their  truthfulness. 

There  is  no  history  so  trustworthy  as  that  prepared  by 
contemporary  writers,  especially  by  those  who  have  them- 
selves been  actively  engaged  in  the  events  which  they  relate. 
Such  history  never  loses  its  interest,  nor  does  the  lapse  of 
ages,  in  the  least  degree,  impair  its  credibility.  While  the 
documents  can  be  preserved,  Xenophon's  Retreat  of  the 
Ten  Thousand,  Caesar's  Gallic  War,  and  the  Dispatches  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  will  be  as  trustworthy  aj  on  the 
day  they  were  written.     Yet  some  suspicion  may  arise  in 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  171 

our  minds,  that  these  commanders  and  historians  might  have 
kept  back  some  important  events  which  would  have  dimmed 
their  reputation  with  posterity,  or  might  have  colored  those 
they  have  related,  so  as  to  add  to  their  fame.  Of  the  great 
facts  related  in  memoirs  addressed  to  their  companions  in 
arms,  able  at  a  glance  to  detect  a  falsehood,  we  never  enter- 
tain the  least  suspicion. 

If,  to  this  be  added,  the  correspondence  of  monuments, 
architecture,  painting,  statuary,  coins,  heraldry,  and  a 
thousand  changes  in  the  manners  and  customs  of  a  people, 
we  become  as  absolutely  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the 
narrative  thus  confirmed  by  these  silent  witnesses  as  if 
we  had  seen  the  events  described.  No  man  who  visits  the 
disinterred  city  of  Pompeii,  and  sees  the  pavements  marked 
by  the  wheel  ruts,  has  any  doubt  that  the  Romans  used 
wheeled  carriages.  When  he  sees  the  court-yards  adorned 
with  mosaic  figures,  and  the  walls  with  paintings  of  the 
gods,  and  of  the  manners  of  the  people  who  worshiped 
them,  he  is  profoundly  impressed  with  the  conviction  that 
they  excelled  in  the  fine  arts,  and  in  the  coarse  vices  of 
heathenism.  When  he  visits  the  Coliseum,  that  vast  ruin 
declares  that  the  wealth  of  an  empire,  once  devoted  to  the 
gratification  of  the  most  savage  passions,  has  been  diverted 
into  some  other  channel.  When  he  visits  the  catacombs, 
and  reads  long  lines  of  heathen  epitaphs,  with  their  despair- 
ing symbols  of  broken  columns,  extinguished  torches,  and 
their  heart-breaking  " Farewell !  an  eternal  farewell!"  and 
then  turns  to  the  monuments  of  onl}^  two  centuries  later, 
and  reads,  "He  sleeps  in  the  Lord,"  "He  waits  the  resur- 
rection to  life  eternal,"  recording  the  hopes  of  whole  gener- 
ations of  survivors,  he  can  not  doubt  the  truth  of  the  writ- 
ten records  of  the  conversion  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

There  is,  moreover,  another  kind  of  contemporary  history 
not  so  connected  and  regular  as  the  formal  diary  or  journal, 
which  docs  not  even  propooC  to  relate  history  at  all,  but  is 


172  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

for  that  very  reason  entirely  removed  from  the  suspicion  of 
giving  a  coloring  to  it ;  which,  at  the  cost  of  a  little  patience 
and  industry,  gives  us  the  most  convincing  confirmations  of 
the  truth,  or  exposures  of  the  mistakes  of  historians,  by  the 
undesigned  and  incidental  way  in  which  the  use  of  a  name, 
a  date,  a  proverb,  a  jest,  an  expletive,  a  quotation,  an  allu- 
sion, flashes  conviction  upon  the  reader's  mind.  I  mean 
contemporary  correspondence.  If  we  have  the  private  let- 
ters of  celebrated  men  laid  before  us,  we  are  enabled  to  look 
right  into  them,  and  see  their  true  character.  Thus  Macau- 
lay  exhibits  to  the  world  the  proud,  lying,  stupid  tyrant, 
James,  displayed  in  his  own  letters.  Thus  Voltaire  records 
himself  an  adulterer,  and  begs  his  friend,  D'Alembert,  to  lie 
for  him ;  his  friend  replies  that  he  has  done  so.  Thus  the 
correspondence  of  the  great  American  herald  of  the  Age  of 
Reason  exhibits  him  drinking  a  quart  of  brandy  daily  at 
his  friend's  "expense,  and  refusing  to  pay  his  bill  for  board- 
ing. In  the  unguarded  freedom  of  confidential  correspond- 
ence the  vail  is  taken  from  the  heart.  We  see  men  as  they 
are.  The  true  man  stands  out  in  his  native  dignity,  and  the 
gilding  is  rubbed  off  the  hypocrite.  Give  the  world  their 
letters,  and  let  the  grave  silence  the  plaudits  and  the  clam- 
ors which  deafened  the  generation  among  whom  they  lived, 
and  no  man  will  hesitate  whether  or  not  to  pronounce  Hume 
a  sensualist,  or  Washington  the  noblest  work  of  God  — an 
honest  man. 

If  we  add  another  test  of  truthfulness,  by  increasing  the 
number  of  the  witnesses,  comparing  a  number  of  letters  re- 
ferring to  the  same  events,  written  by  persons  of  various 
degrees  of  education,  and  of  difi*erent  occupations  and  ranks 
of  life,  resident  in  difl*erent  countries,  acting  independently 
of  each  other,  and  find  them  all  agree  in  their  allusions  to, 
or  direct  mention  of,  some  central  facts  concerning  which 
they  are  all  interested,  no  one  can  rightfully  doubt  that  this 
undesigned  agreement  declares  the  truth.     But  if,  in  addi- 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  173 

tion  to  all  these  undesigned  coin'idences,  we  happen  upon 
the  correspondence  of  persons  whose  interests  and  passions 
were  diametrically  opposed  to  those  of  our  correspondents, 
and  find  that,  when  they  have  occasion  to  refer  to  them,  they 
also  confirm  the  great  facts  already  ascertained,  then  our 
belief  becomes  conviction  which  can  not  be  overturned  by 
any  sophistry,  that  these  things  did  occur.  If  Whig  and 
Tory  agree  in  relating  the  facts  of  James'  flight,  and  Wil- 
liam's accession,  if  the  letters  of  his  Jacobite  friends  and 
those  of  the  French  embassador  confirm  the  statements  of 
the  English  historian,  and  if  we  are  put  in  possession  of  the 
letters  which  James  himself  wrote  from  France  and  Ireland 
to  his  friends  in  England,  does  any  man  in  his  common 
sense  doubt  that  the  Revolution  of  1G88  did  actually  occur? 
When,  in  addition  to  all  this  concentration  and  converg- 
ence of  testimony,  one  finds  that  the  matters  related,  being 
of  public  concern,  and  the  changes  effected  for  the  public 
weal,  the  people  have  ever  since  observed,  and  do  to  this 
day  celebrate,  by  religious  worship  and  public  rejoicings,  the 
anniversaries  of  the  principal  events  of  that  Revolution,  and 
that  he  himself  has  been  present,  and  has  heard  the  thanks- 
givings, and  witnessed  the  rejoicings  on  those  anniversaries, 
the  facts  of  the  history  come  out  from  the  domains  of  learned 
curiosity,  and  take  their  stand  on  the  market-place  of  the 
busy  world's  engagements.  We  become  at  once  conscious 
that  this  is  a  practical  question — a  great  fact  which  concerns 
us  — that  the  whole  of  the  law  and  government  of  a  vast 
empire  has  felt  its  impress  — that  our  ancestors  and  ourselves 
have  been  molded  under  its  influence,  and  that  the  religion 
of  Europe  and  America,  under  whose  guardianship  we  have 
grown  to  a  prominent  place  among  the  people  of  earth,  and 
may  arrive  at  a  better  prominence  among  the  nations  of  the 
saved,  has  been  secured  by  that  Revolution.  We  could 
scarcely  know  whether  most  to  pity  or  contemn  the  man 
who  should  labor  to  persuade  us  that  such  a  Revolution  had 


174  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

never  occurred,  or  that  tlie  facts  had  been  essentially  mis- 
represented. 

Now  it  is  precisely  on  this  kind  of  evidence  that  we  be- 
lieve the  great  facts  of  the  Christian  Revolution.  We  have 
contemporary  histories,  formal  and  informal ;  letters,  public 
and  private,  from  the  principal  agents  in  it,  and  opposers  of 
it,  dispersed  from  Babylon  to  Eome,  and  addressed  to  Greeks, 
Romans,  Jews,  and  Asiatics,  written  by  physicians,  fisher- 
men, proconsuls,  emperors,  and  apostles.  We  have  miles  of 
monuments,  paintings,  statuary,  cabinets  of  coins,  and  all 
the  heraldry  of  Christendom.  And  these  great  facts  stand 
out  more  prominently  on  the  theater  of  the  world's  business 
as  effecting  changes  on  our  laws  and  lives,  and  their  intro- 
duction as  authenticated  by  public  commemorations,  more 
solemn  and  more  numerous  than  those  resulting  from  the 
English  or  the  American  Revolution.  Our  main  difl&culty 
lies  in  selecting,  from  the  vast  mass  of  materials,  a  portion 
sufl&ciently  distinct  and  manageable  to  be  handled  in  a  single 
essay. 

We  shall  be  guided  by  the  motto  already  announced  as 
the  rule  of  inductive  research.  One  thing  at  a  time ;  and 
the  nearest  first.  The  Epistles,  being  nearer  our  own  times 
than  the  Gospels,  claim  our  first  notice,  and  first  among 
these,  those  which  stand  latest  on  the  page  of  sacred  his- 
tory, the  letters  of  John ;  two  from  Peter  to  the  Christians 
of  Asia;  and  those  which  Paul,  in  chains  for  the  gospel, 
dictated  from  imperial  Rome. 

From  the  abundant  notices  of  the  early  Christians  by  his- 
torians and  philosophers,  satirists  and  comedians,  martyrs 
and  magistrates,  Jewish,  Christian,  and  heathen,  I  shall  select 
only  two  for  comparison  with  the  Epistles  and  of  the  apos- 
tles; and  both  those  heathen— the  celebrated  letter  of  Pliny 
to  Trajan,  and  the  well-established  history  of  Tacitus ;  both 
utterly  undeniable,  and  admitted  by  the  most  skeptical  to 
be  above  suspicion.     Not  that  I  suppose  that  the  testimony 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  175 

of  men  who  do  not  take  the  trouble  of  making  any  inquiry 
into  the  reality  of  the  facts  of  the  Christian  religion  is 
more  accurate  than  that  of  those  whose  lives  were  devoted 
to  its  study;  or  that  we  have  any  just  reason  to  attach  as 
much  weight  to  the  assertions  of  persons,  who,  by  their  own 
showing,  tortured  and  murdered  men  and  women  convicted 
of  no  crime  but  that  of  bearing  the  name  of  Chri  jt,  as  to 
those  of  these  martyrs,  whose  characters  they  acknowledged 
to  be  blameless,  and  who  sealed  their  testimony  with  the 
last  and  highest  attestation  of  sincerity — their  blood.  Con- 
sidered merely  as  a  historian,  whether,  as  regards  means  of 
knowledge,  or  tests  of  truthfulness,-  by  every  unprejudiced 
mind,  Peter  will  always  be  preferred  to  Pliny.  But  because 
the  world  will  ever  love  its  own,  and  hate  the  disciples  of 
the  Lord,  there  will  always  be  a  large  class  to  whom  the 
history  of  Tacitus  will  seem  more  veritable  than  that  of 
Luke,  and  the  letters  of  Pliny  more  reliable  than  those  of 
Peter.  For  their  sakes  we  avail  ourselves  of  that  most 
convincing  of  all  attestations — the  testimony  of  an  enemy. 
What  friends  and  foes  unite  in  attesting  must  be  accepted 
as  true. 

The  facts  which  we  shall  thus  establish  are  not,  in  the 
first  instance,  those  called  miraculous.  We  are  now  ascer- 
taining the  general  character  for  truthfulness  of  our  letter 
writers  and  historians.  If  we  find  that  their  general  his- 
toric narrative  is  contradicted  by  that  of  other  credible  his- 
torians, then  we  suspect  their  story.  But  if  we  find  that, 
in  all  essential  matters  of  public  notoriety,  they  are  sup- 
ported by  the  concurred  testimony  of  their  foes,  and  that 
the  narrative  of  the  miracles  they  relate  bears  the  seals 
of  thousands  who  from  foes  became  friends,  from  conviction 
of  its  truth,  then  we  receive  their  witness  as  true.  Even 
in  Paul's  day,  heathen  Greek  writers  bore  testimony  to  the 
apostles,  what  manner  of  entering  in  they  had  unto  the 
converts  of  Thessalonica ;  and  how  they  turned  to  God  from 


170  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

idols,  to  serve  the  living  and  true  Grod,  and  to  wait  for  his 
Son  from  heaven,  whom  he  raised  from  the  dead — even  Jesus, 
who  delivered  us  from  the  wrath  to  come.  Pliny  wrote 
forty  years  later. 

Pliny,  the  younger,  was  born  A.  D.  Gl,  was  praetor  under 
Domitian,  consul  in  the  third  year  of  Trajan,  A.  D.  100, 
was  exceedingly  desirous  to  add  to  his  other  honors  that  of 
the  priesthood ;  was  accordingly  consecrated  an  augur,  and 
built  temples,  bought  images,  and  consecrated  them  on  his 
estates;  was,  in  A.  D.  106,  appointed  Governor  of  the 
Koman  Provinces  of  Pontus  and  Bithynia-J^ — a  vast  tract 
of  Asia  Minor,  lying  along  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  and 
the  Propontis ;  and  including  the  province  anciently  called 
Mysia,  in  which  were  situated  Pergamos  and  Thyatira,  and 
in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Sardis  and  Philadelphia.  Pliny 
reached  his  province  by  the  usual  route,  the  port  of  Ephe- 
sus ;  where  John  had  lived  for  many  years,  and  indited  his 
letters,  A.  D.  96,  scarcely  ten  years  before.  The  letters  of 
Peter  to  the  strangers  scattered  through  Pontus,  Galatia, 
Cappadocia,  Asia,  and  Bithynia,  bring  us  to  the  same  moun- 
tainous region,  eight  hundred  miles  distant  from  Judea; 
whence,  in  earlier  days,  our  savage  ancestors  received  those 
Phoenician  priests  of  Baal,  whose  round  towers  mark  the 
coasts  of  Ireland  nearest  to  the  setting  sun ;  and  whence, 
about  the  period  under  consideration,  came  the  heralds  of 
the  Sun  of  Righteousness,  who  brought  the  ^^Leahhar  Eoin'f 
which  tells  their  children  of  him  in  whom  is  the  life  and  the 
light  of  men.  Natives  of  these  countries  had  been  in  Jeru- 
salem during  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  and,  though  only 
strangers,  had  witnessed  the  darkness,  and  the  earthquake, 
and  had  heard  the  rumors  of  what  had  come  to  pass  in  those 
days;  and  on  the  day  of  Pentecost  had  mingled  with  the 


*  Lardner  VII.  page  18,  et  seq. 

t  Pronounced  Laar  Owen— John's  Book. 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  PACT  OR  FABLE  ?  177 

curious  crowd  around  the  apostles,  and  heard  them  speak, 
in  their  own  mother  tongues,  of  the  wonderful  works  of 
God.  The  remainder  of  the  story  of  their  conversion  we 
gather  from  the  letters  of  Peter,  John,  and  Pliny. 

"Pliny,  to  the  Emperor  Trajan,  wislieth  health  and  happiness:  * 

"  It  is  my  constant  custom,  Sire,  to  refer  myself  to  you  in  all 
matters  concerning  which  I  have  any  doubt.  For  who  can  better 
direct  me  when  I  hesitate,  or  instruct  me  when  I  am  ignorant  ? 

"  I  have  never  been  present  at  any  trials  of  Christians,  so  that  I 
know  not  well  what  is  the  subject  matter  of  punishment,  or  of  in- 
quiry, or  what  strictures  ought  to  be  used  in  either.  Nor  have  I 
been  a  little  perplexed  to  determine  whether  any  difference  ought 
to  be  made  upon  account  of  age,  or  whether  the  young  and  tender, 
and  the  full  grown  and  robust,  ought  to  be  treated  all  alike ;  whether 
repentance  should  entitle  to  pardon,  or  whether  all  who  have  once 
been  Christians  ought  to  be  punished,  though  they  are  now  no 
longer  so;  whether  the  name  itself,  although  no  crimes  be  detected, 
or  crimes  only  belonging  to  the  name  ought  to  be  punished. 

"In  the  meantime,  I  have  taken  this  course  with  all  who  have 
been  brought  before  me,  and  have  been  accused  as  Christians.  I 
have  put  the  question  to  them,  whether  they  were  Christians.  Upon 
their  confessing  to  me  that  they  were,  I  repeated  the  question  a 
second  and  a  third  time,  threatening  also  to  punish  them  with 
death.  Such  as  still  persisted,  I  ordered  away  to  be  punished;  for 
it  was  no  doubt  with  me,  whatever  might  be  the  nature  of  their 
opinion,  that  contumacy  and  inflexible  obstinacy  ought  to  be  pun- 
ished. There  were  others  of  the  same  infatuation,  whom,  because 
they  are  Roman  citizens,  I  have  noted  down  to  be  sent  to  the  city. 

"  In  a  short  time  the  crime  spreading  itself,  even  whilst  under 
persecution,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  divers  sorts  of  people  came  in 
my  way.  An  information  was  presented  to  me,  without  mention- 
ing the  author,  containing  the  names  of  many  persons,  who,  upon 
examination,  denied  that  they  were  Christians,  or  had  even  been 
so;  who  repeated  after  me  an  invocation  of  the  gods,  and  with 
wine  and  frankincense  made  supplication  to  your  image,  which, 
for  that  purpose,  I  have  caused  to  be  brought  and  set  before  them, 
together  with  the  statues  of  the  deities.     Moreover,  they  reviled 

*  Lib.  X.  Ep.  97,  Lardner  VII.  22. 
12 


178  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

the  name  of  Christ.  None  of  which  things,  as  is  said,  they  who 
are  really  Christians  can  by  any  means  bo  compelled  to  do.  These, 
therefore,  I  thought  proper  to  discharge. 

"  Others  were  named  by  an  informer,  who  at  first  confessed  them- 
selves Christians,  and  afterward  denied  it.  The  rest  said  they  had 
been  Christians,  but  had  left  them;  some  three  years  ago,  some, 
longer,  and  one  or  more  above  twenty  years.  They  all  worshiped 
your  image,  and  the  statues  of  the  gods;  these  also  reviled  Christ. 
They  affirmed  that  the  whole  of  their  fault  or  error  lay  in  this: 
that  they  were  wont  to  meet  together,  on  a  stated  day,  before  it 
was  light,  and  sing  among  themselves  alternately,  a  hymn  to  Christ 
as  'a  God,  and  bind  themselves  by  a  sacrament,  not  to  the  commis- 
sion of  any  wickedness,  but  not  to  be  guilty  of  theft,  or  robbery, 
or  adultery;  never  to  falsify  their  word,  nor  to  deny  a  pledge  com- 
mitted to  them,  when  called  upon  to  return  it.  When  these  things 
were  performed,  it  was  their  custom  to  separate,  and  then  to  come 
together  again  to  a  meal,  which  they  ate  in  common,  without  any 
disorder;  but  this  they  had  forborne  since  the  publication  of  my 
edict,  by  which,  according  to  your  command,  I  prohibited  assem- 
blies. After  receiving  this  account,  I  judged  it  the  more  neces- 
sary to  examine  two  maid  servants,  which  were  called  ministers,  by 
torture.  But  I  have  discovered  nothing  besides  a  bad  and  exces- 
sive superstition. 

"  Suspending,  .therefore,  all  judicial  proceedings,  I  have  recourse 
to  you  for  advice;  for  it  has  appeared  to  me  a  matter  highly  de- 
serving consideration,  especially  upon  account  of  the  great  number 
of  persons  who  are  in  danger  of  suffering.  For  many  of  all  ages, 
and  every  rank,  of  both  sexes  likewise,  are  accused,  and  will  be 
accused.  Nor  has .  the  contagion  of  this  superstition  seized  cities 
only,  but  the  lesser  towns  also,  and  the  open  country.  Neverthe^ 
less,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  may  be  restrained  and  arrested.  It  is 
certain  that  the  temples,  which  were  almost  forsaken,  begin  to  be 
frequented.  And  the  sacred  solemnities,  after  a  long  intermission, 
are  revived.  Victims,  likewise,  are  everywhere  brought  up,  whereas, 
for  some  time,  there  were  few  purchasers.  Whence,  it  is  easy  to 
imagine,  what  numbers  of  men  might  be  reclaimed,  if  pardon  were 
granted  to  those  tvrho  shall  repent." 

"  Trajan  to  Pliny,  wisheth  health  and  happiness :  ♦ 

"  You  have  taken  the  right  course,  my  Piiny,  in  your  proceed- 

*  Lib.  X.  Ep.  93,  Lardner  VII.  24. 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE?  179 

ings  with  those  who  have  been  brought  before  you  as  Christians ; 
for  it  is  impossible  to  establish  any  one  rule  that  shall  hold  univer- 
sally. They  are  not  to  be  sought  after.  If  any  are  brought  before 
you,  and  are  convicted,  they  ought  to  be  punished.  However,  he 
that  denies  his  being  a  Christian,  and  makes  it  evident  in  fact,  that 
is,  by  supplicating  to  our  gods,  though  he  be  suspected  to  have  been 
so  formerly,  let  him  be  pardoned  upon  repentance.  But  in  no 
case,  of  any  crime  whatever,  may  a  bill  of  information  be  received 
without  being  signed  by  him  who  presents  it,  for  that  would  be  a 
dangerous  precedent,  and  unworthy  of  my  government." 

I  must  request  my  reader  now  to  procure  a  New  Testa- 
ment, and  read,  at  one  reading,  the  First  General  Epistle  of 
Peter,  the  First  General  Epistle  of  John,  and  the  Seven 
Epistles  to  the  Churches  in  Ephesus,  Smyrna,  Pergamos, 
Thyatira,  Sardis,  Philadelphia,  and  Laodicea  — only  about 
as  much  matter  as  four  pages  of  Harper's  Magazine,  or  half 
a  page  of  the  Commercial —t\i2ii  he  may  be  able  to  do  the 
same  justice  to  the  apostles  as  to  the  governor.  He  will 
thus  be  able  to  see  the  force  of  the  various  allusions  to  the 
numbers,  doctrines,  morals,  persecutions,  and  perseverance 
of  the  Christians,  contained  in  those  letters;  the  object 
which  I  have  in  view  being,  to  establish  their  authenticity 
by  proving  the  truthfulness  of  their  allusions  to  thes^e 
things.  If  you  think  this  too  much  trouble,  please  lay 
down  the  book,  and  dismiss  the  consideration  of  religion 
from  your  thoughts.  If  the  letters  of  the  .apostles  are  not 
worth  a  careful  reading,  it  is  of  no  consequence  whether 
they  are  true  or  false. 

1.  These  letters  take  for  granted,  that  the  fact  of  the 
existence  of  large  numbers  of.  Christians,  organized  into 
churches,  and  meeting  regularly  for  religious  worship,  at 
the  close  of  the  first  century,  is  a  matter  of  public  notoriety 
to  the  world.  Here,  in  countries  eight  hundred  miles  dis- 
tant from  its  birthplace,  in  the  lifetime  of  those  who  had 
seen  its  founder  crucified,  we  find  Christians  scattered  over 


180  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

Pontus,  Galatia,  Cappadocia,  Asia,  and  Bithynia — churches 
in  seven  provincial  cities,  the  sect  well  known  to  Pliny,  be- 
fore he  left  Italy,  as  a  proscribed  and  persecuted  religion, 
the  professors  of  which  were  customarily  brought  before 
courts  for  trial  and  punishment  though  he  had  not  himself 
been  present  at  such  trials— and  now  so  numerous  in  his 
provinces,  that  a  great  number  of  persons,  of  both  sexes, 
young  and  old,  of  all  ranks,  natives  and  Roman  citizens, 
professed  Christianity.  Others,  influenced  by  their  exam- 
ple and  instruction,  renounced  idolatry ;  victims  were  not 
led  to  sacrifice ;  the  sacred  rites  of  the  gods  were  suspended, 
and  their  temples  forsaken.  The  existence,  then,  of  churches 
of  Christ,  consisting  of  vast  numbers  of  converted  hea- 
thens, at  the  close  of  the  first  century,  is  in  no  wise  mytho- 
logical or  dubious.  It  is  an  established  historical  fact.  The 
Epistles  of  the  apostles  stand  confirmed  by  the  Epistles  of 
the  governor  and  the  emperor. 

2.  The  second  great  fact  presented  in  the  Epistles,  and 
confirmed  by  the  letters  of  the  governor  and  the  emperor, 
is,  that  the  worship  of  the  Christian  Church  then  was  es- 
sentially the  same  which  it  is  now.  We  find  these  Chris- 
tians of  the  first  century  commemorating  the  death  and 
resurrection  of  Christ,  and  rendering  divine  honors  to  him ; 
the  "stated  day"  on  which  they  assembled  for  worship, 
and  the  "  common  meal,"  are  as  plain  a  description  of  the 
"disciples  coming  together  upon  the  first  day  of  the 
week,  to  break  bread,"  as  a  heathen  could  give  in  few 
words.  Their  terms  of  communion  too,  to  which  they 
pledged  their  members  by  a  sacrament,  "not  to  be 
guilty  of  theft,  robbery,  or  adultery ;  never  to  falsify  their 
word,  or  deny  a  pledge  committed  to  them,"  find  their  coun- 
terpart in  every  well-regulated  church  at  this  day. 

The  articles  of  the  Christian  faith,  then,  are  not  the 
"gradual  accretions  of  centuries,"  nor  is  the  "redemptive 
idea,  as  attaching  to  Christ,  a  dogma  of  the  post- Augustine 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  181 

period."  The  cliurclies  of  the  first  century  commemorated 
the  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus,  as  that  of  a  divine 
person,  "singing  the  hymn  to  him  as  a  God,"  which  their 
descendants  sing  at  this  day  around  his  table : 

"  Forever  and  forever  is,  O  God,  thy  throne  of  might, 
The  scepter  of  thy  kingdom  is  a  scepter  that  is  right, 
Thou  lovest  right,  and  hatest  ill ;  for  God,  thy  God,  Most  High, 
Above  thy  fellows  hath  with  th'  oil  of  joy  anointed  thee." 

And  the  question  will  force  itself  upon  our  minds,  and  can 
not  be  evaded,  How  did  these  apostles  persuade  such  multi- 
tudes of  heathens  to  believe  their  repeated  assertions  of  the 
death,  resurrection,  and  glory  of  Jesus  ?  In  the  space  of 
three  octavo  pages,  Peter  refers  to  these  facts  eighteen 
times.  John,  in  like  manner,  repeatedly  affirms  them.  The 
Christian  religion  consists  in  the  belief  of  these  facts,  and 
a  life  corresponding  to  them.  Now,  how  did  the  apostles 
persuade  such  multitudes  of  heathens  to  believe  a  report  so 
wonderful,  profess  a  religion  so  novel,  renounce  the  gods 
they  had  worshiped  from  their  childhood,  and  all  the  cere- 
monies of  an  attractive,  sensual  religion;  "temples  of  splen- 
did architecture,  statues  of  exquisite  sculpture,  priests  and 
victims  superbly  adorned,  attendant  beauteous  youth  of  both 
sexes,  performing  all  the  sacred  rites  with  gracefulness;  re- 
ligious dances,  illuminations,  concerts  of  the  sweetest  music, 
perfumes  of  the  rarest  fragrance,"  and  other  more  licentious 
enjoyments,  inseparable  from  heathen  worship.  How  did 
they  persuade  them  to  exchange  all  this  for  the  assembly 
before  daybreak,  the  frugal  common  meal,  the  psalm  to 
Christ,  and  the  commemoration  of  the  death  of  a  crucified 
malefactor?  If  we  add,  that  they  commemorated  his  res- 
urrection, by  observing  the  Lord's  day,  the  question  comes 
up,  How  did  they  come  to  believe  that  he  was  risen  from 
the  dead?  Could  a  few  despised  strangers,  or  a  few  citizens 
if  you  will,  persuade  such  a  community,  purely  by  natural 
means,  to  believe  such  a  report,  to  care  whether  the  Syrian 


182  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

Jew  died  or  rose,  or  to  commemorate  weekly,  by  a  solemn 
religious  service,  either  his  death  or  resurrection?  It  is 
evident  they  believed  what  they  commemorated.  How  did 
they  come  to  do  so? 

But  whether  we  can  answer  the  question  or  not,  the  fact 
stands  out  as  indisputable,  that  not  merely  the  writers  of, 
the  Epistles  and  Gospels,  and  a  few  enthusiasts,  but  an  im- 
mense multitude  of  all  ages,  of  both  sexes,  and  of  every 
rank — the  whole  membership  of  the  primitive  churches — 
did  believe  in  the  death,  resurrection,  and  glory  of  the  Lord 
Jesus,  and  did  render  to  him  divine  worship.  The  second 
great  fact,  affirmed  in  the  Epistles,  stands  confirmed  by  the 
testimony  of  the  heathen  governor,  and  of  the  Roman  em- 
peror. 

3.  A  mere  theory  of  a  new  religion,  unconnected  with 
practice,  may  be  easily  received  by  those  who  care  little 
about  any,  so  long  as  it  brings  no  suffering  or  inconvenience. 
But  the  religion  of  these  Christians  was,  as  you  see,  a  prac- 
tical religion.  If  their  new  worship  required  a  great  de- 
parture from  the  worship  of  their  childhood,  their  Christian 
morals  required  a  still  greater  departure  from  their  former 
mode  of  life.  I  need  not  remind  you  of  the  moral  codes 
of  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristides,  who  taught  that  lying, 
thieving,  adultery,  and  murder  were  lawful ;  nor  how  much 
worse  than  the  theory  of  the  best  of  the  heathen  were  the 
lives  of  the  worst;  nor  how  unpopular  to  persons  so  edu- 
cated would  be  such  teaching  as  this — "  Forasmuch  then 
as  Christ  hath  suffered  for  us  in  the  flesh,  arm  yourselves 
also  with  the  same  mind :  for  he  that  hath  suffered  in  the 
flesh  hath  ceased  from  sin :  that  he  no  longer  should  live 
the  rest  of  his  time  in  the  flesh  to  the  lusts  of  men,  but  to 
the  will  of  God.  For  the  time  past  of  our  life  may  suffice 
us  to  have  wrought  the  will  of  the  Gentiles,  when  we 
walked  in  lasciviousness,  lusts,  excess  of  wine,  revel ings, 
banquetings,  and  abominable  idolatries;  wherein  they  think 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  183 

it  strange  tliat  ye  run  not  with  them  to  the  same  excess  of 
riot,  speaking  evil  of  you :  who  shall  give  account  to  him 
that  is  ready  to  judge  the  living  and  the  dead."  "Lay 
aside  all  malice,  and  guile,  and  hypocrisies,  and  envies,  and 
all  evil  speakings."  "Whosoever  abideth  in  Christ  sinneth 
not.  Whosoever  sinneth  hath  not  seen  him,  neither  known 
him.  Little  children,  let  no  man  deceive  you.  He  that 
doeth  righteousness  is  righteous,  even  as  he  is  righteous. 
He  that  committeth  sin  is  of  the  devil."  So  sharp,  and 
stern,  and  strictly  virtuous  is  apostolic  religion,  as  displayed 
in  these  letters.  Is  it  possible  then  that  these  converted 
heathens  did  really  even  approach  this  standard  of  morality? 
Did  this  gospel  of  Christ  actually  produce  any  such  refor- 
mation of  their  lives? 

You  have  the  testimony  of  apostates,  eager  to  save  their 
lives  by  giving  such  information  as  they  knew  would  be 
acceptable  to  the  persecutor;  you  have  the  testimony  of  the 
two  aged  deaconesses,  under  torture ;  you  have  the  unwill- 
ing, but  yet  express,  testimony  of  their  torturer  and  mur- 
derer, that  all  his  cruel  ingenuity  could  discover  nothing 
worse  than  an  excessive  superstition  and  culpable  obstinacy. 
What,  then,  does  this  philosophic  inspector  of  entrails,  and 
adorer  of  idols,  call  an  excessive  superstition  and  culpable 
obstinacy?  Why,  they  bound  themselves  by  the  most  solemn 
religious  services,  not  to  be  guilty  of  theft,  robbery,  or 
adultery;  not  to  falsify  their  word,  nor  deny  a  pledge  com- 
mitted to  them ;  and  when  some  senseless  blocks  of  brass 
were  carried  on  men's  shoulders,  into  the  court-house,  to 
represent  a  mortal  man,  they  would  not  adore  them,  nor 
pray  to  them ;  no,  not  though  this  philosopher  compiled  the 
liturgy,  and  set  the  example.  For  this  refusal,  and  this 
alone,  he  ordered  them  away  to  death.  Doubtless  they 
heard,  in  their  hearts,  the  well-known  words,  "  Let  none  of 
you  suffer  as  a  murderer,  or  as  a  thief,  or  as  an  evil-doer,  or 
as  a  busybody  in  other  men's  matters.      But  if  any  man 


184  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

suffer  as  a  Christian,  let  him  not  be  ashamed,  but  let  him 
glorify  God  on  this  behalf." 

The  morality  of  the  Epistles,  then,  was  not  a  merely  a 
fine  theory,  but  an  actual  rule  of  life.  The  moral  codes  of 
the  apostles  were  received  as  actually  binding  on  the  mem- 
bers of  the  churches  of  the  first  century.  In  this  all-im- 
portant matter  of  the  rule  of  a  good  life — the  fruits  by 
which  the  tree  is  known — the  integrity,  authority,  and  suc- 
cess of  the  apostles,  in  turning  licentious  heathens  into  moral 
Christians,  is  authenticated  by  the  unwilling  testimony  of 
their  persecutors.  The  Epistles  of  the  apostles  stand  con- 
firmed, as  to  their  ethics,  by  the  letters  of  Trajan  and  Pliny. 

4.  The  only  other  fact  to  which  I  call  your  attention, 
from  among  the  multitude  alluded  to  in  these  letters,  is  the 
cost  at  which  these  converts  from  heathenism  embraced  this 
new  religion.  Every  one  who  renounced  heathenism,  and 
professed  the  name  of  Christ,  knew  very  well  that  he  must 
suffer  for  it.  "  Beloved,  think  it  not  strange  concerning  the 
fiery  trial  which  is  to  try  you,  as  though  some  strange  thing 
happened  unto  you,  but  rejoice,  inasmuch  as  ye  are  partakers 
of  Christ's  sufferings,  that  when  his  glory  shall  be  revealed, 
ye  may  be  glad  with  exceeding  joy ; "  this  was  the  welcome 
of  the  Bithynian  convert  into  the  Church  of  Christ.  Per- 
secution by  fire  and  sword  was  then  the  common  lot  of  the 
Church.  'I  have  never  been  present  at  any  trials  of  the 
Christians,"  says  the  governor.  Such  trials  were  well  known 
to  him  it  seems.  He  was  not  sure  whether  he  should  mur- 
der all  who  ever  had  borne  the  name  of  Christ,  or  only  those 
who  proved  themselves  to  be  really  his  disciples,  by  refusing 
to  revile  him,  and  return  to  idolatry;  and  the  merciful  em- 
peror commands  him  to  spare  the  apostates.  Above  twenty 
years  before — in  A.  D.  86 — there  were  apostates  from  the 
persecuted  religion.  In  A.  D.  90,  John  had  written,  "  they 
went  out  from  us,  that  it  might  be  made  manifest  they  were 
not  of  us ;  for  if  they  had  been  of  us,  they  would  no  doubt 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  185 

have  continued  with  us ;  but  they  went  out  that  it  might 
be  made  manifest  that  they  were  not  all  of  us."  So  it  seems 
Pliny  thought:  "They  all  worshiped  your  image,  and  other 
statues  of  the  gods;  these  also  reviled  Christ.  None  of 
which  things,  as  is  said,  they  who  are  really  Christians  can 
by  any  means  be  compelled  to  do."  What  these  means  were 
he  tells  us :  "I  put  the  question  to  them,  whether  they  were 
Christians.  Upon  their  confessing  to  me  that  they  were,  I 
repeated  the  question  a  second  and  a  third  time,  threaten- 
ing, also,  to  punish  them  with  death.  Such  as  still  per- 
sisted, I  ordered  away  to  be  punished."  What  is  very  re- 
markable, it  was,  it  seems,  "usual  in  such  cases,  for  the 
crime  to  spread  itself,  even  whilst  under  persecution."  In 
the  face  of  such  dangers,  these  heathen  would  still  profess 
faith  in  Christ,  and  when  they  might  have  saved  their  lives 
by  reviling  him,  refused  to  do  so.  From  the  published  re- 
script of  the  emperor,  approving  of  Pliny's  course,  and  con- 
demning to  death  all  who  were  convicted  of  being  really 
Christians ;  from  the  public  circulars  of  the  apostles,  warn- 
ing them  of  "fiery  trials,"  "Satan  casting  some  of  them 
into  prison,"  and  exhorting  them  to  "be  faithful  unto  death ;" 
and  from  such  comments  on  these  as  the  torture  and  public 
execution  of  aged  women  as  well  as  men — the  terms  of  dis- 
cipleship  were  well  known  to  the  whole  world.  Yet  we  see 
that  in  the  face  of  all  this,  "great  numbers  of  persons,  of 
both  sexes,  and  of  all  ages,  and  of  every  rank,"  in  Pliny's 
opinion,  were  so  steadfast  in  their  faith,  that  "  they  were  in 
great  danger  of  suffering." 

Here,  then,  is  another  well-attested  fact,  in  which  the 
testimony  of  the  apostles  stands  confirmed  by  the  signatures 
of  the  Bithynian  governor,  and  the  Roman  emperor — a  fact 
which  stands  forth  clear,  prominent,  most  undoubted,  with- 
out the  smallest  trace  of  anything  mythological  or  misty 
about  it — that,  in  A.  D.  106,  great  numbers  of  converted 
heathens  did  suffer  exile,  torture,  and  death  itself,  rather 


18^  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

than  renounce  Christ ;  and  that  it  was  well  known  that  the 
Christian  faith  enabled  its  professor  to  overcome  the  world. 
These  four  great  facts  of  the  later  Epistles,  being  thus 
established  beyond  dispute,  in  pursuance  of  our  plan,  we 
ascend  the  stream  of  history  some  forty  years,  to  the  time 
of  the  earlier  Epistles,  when  Paul  lay  in  the  Praetorian 
prison,  and  his  faithful  companion,  Luke,  wrote  the  con- 
tinuation of  his  narrative  of  the  things  most  surely  believed 
among  the  Christians;  when  "apostles  were  made  as  the 
filth  of  the  world,  and  the  offscouring  of  all  things;"  and 
Christians  "  were  made  a  gazing  stock  both  by  reproaches  and 
afflictions;"  "were  brought  before  kings  and  rulers,  and  hated 
of  all  nations  for  Christ's  name  sake;  "  "endured  a  great 
fight  of  afflictions;"  were  "for  his  sake  killed  all  the  day 
long,  and  accounted  as  sheep  for  the  slaughter;"  "  were  made 
a  spectacle  to  the  world,  to  angels,  and  to  men."  We  remove 
the  field  of  our  investigation  from  a  remote  province  of 
Asia,  to  one  equally  remote  from  Judea,  and  far  more  un- 
favorable for  the  growth  of  the  religion  of  a  crucified  Jew, 
to  the  proud  capital  of  the  world,  imperial  Rome.  The  time 
shall  be  shortly  after  the  burning  of  the  city,  in  A.  D.  64, 
and  during  the  raging  of  the  first  of  those  systematic,  im- 
perial, and  savage  persecutions  through  which  the  Church 
of  Christ  waded,  in  the  bloody  footsteps  of  her  Lord,  to 
world-wide  influence,  and  undying  fame.  Our  historian 
shall  be  the  well-known  Tncitus;  and  the  single  extract  from 
his  history,  one  of  which  the  infidel  Gibbon  says:*  "The 
most  skeptical  criticism  is  obliged  to  respect  the  truth  of 
this  important  fact,  and  the  integrity  of  this  celebrated  pas- 
sage of  Tacitus."  I  shall  not  insert  quotations  from  Paul 
or  Luke;  that  were  merely  to  transcribe  large  portions  of 
the  Epistles  and  Gospels,  which  whoever  will  not  carefully 
peruse,  disqualifies  himself  for  forming  a  judgment  of  their 

♦  Decline  and  Fall,  Vol.  II.  page  407. 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  PACT  OR  FABLE  ?  187 

veracity.  The  confirmation  of  the  four  facts  already  es- 
tablished, of  the  existence,  worship,  morals,  and  sufferings 
of  the  disciples  of  Christ;  and  these  facts  as  well  known 
within  thirty  years  after  his  death,  will  sufficiently  appear 
by  the  perusal  of  the  following  testimony  of  Tacitus.* 

After  relating  the  burning  of  the  city,  and  Nero's  attempt 
to  transfer  the  odium  of  it  to  the  sect  "  commonly  known 
by  the  name  of  Christians,"  he  says: 

"  The  author  of  that  name  was  Christ,  who,  in  the  reign  of  Ti- 
berius, was  put  to  death  as  a  criminal,  under  the  procurator,  Pon- 
tius Pilate.  But  this  pestilent  superstition,  checked  for  a  while, 
broke  out  afresh,  and  spread  not  only  over  Judea,  where  the  evil 
originated,  but  also  in  Kome,  where  all  that  is  evil  on  the  earth 
finds  its  way,  and  is  practiced.  At  first,  those  only  were  appre- 
hended who  confessed  themselves  of  that  sect;  afterward,  a  vast 
multitude  discovered  by  them;  all  of  whom  were  condemned,  not 
so  much  for  the  crime  of  burning  the  city,  as  for  their  enmity  to 
mankind.  Their  executions  were  so  contrived,  as  to  expose  them 
to  derision  and  contempt.  Some  were  covered  over  with  the  skins 
of  wild  beasts,  that  they  might  be  torn  to  pieces  by  dogs ;  some 
were  crucified ;  while  others,  having  been  daubed  over  with  com- 
bustible materials,  were  set  up  for  lights  in  the  night  time,  and  thus 
burned  to  death.  For  these  spectacles  Nero  gave  his  own  gardens, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  exhibited  there  the  diversions  of  the  circus ; 
sometimes  standing  in  the  crowd  as  a  spectator,  in  the  habit  of  a 
charioteer;  and,  at  other  times,  driving  a  chariot  himself ;  until  at 
length  these  men,  though  really  criminal,  and  deserving  of  exem- 
plary punishment,  began  to  be  commiserated,  as  people  who  were 
destroyed,  not  out  of  regard  to  the  public  welfare,  but  only  to  grat- 
ify the  cruelty  of  one  man." 

We  add  no  comment  on  this  remarkable  passage.  Take 
up  your  New  Testament  and  read  the  contemporary  history 
— Acts  xxii.  to  the  end  of  the  book — and  the  letters  of  Paul 
from  Rome,  to  Philemon,  Titus,  the  Ephesians,  Philippians, 
Colossians,  and  the  Second  to  Timothy,  written  when  the 
aged  prisoner  was  ready  to  be  offered,  and  the  time  of  his 

*  Lib.  XV.  chap.  44. 


188  IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ? 

departure,  amidst  such  scenes  and  sufferings,  was  at  hand. 
Then  form  your  own  opinion  as  to  the  origin  and  nature  of 
that  faith  in  Jesus  which  enabled  him  to  say :  "  None  of 
these  things  move  me,  neither  count  I  my  life  dear  unto  me, 
that  I  may  finish  my  course  with  joy,  and  the  testimony 
which  I  have  received  of  the  Lord  Jesus."  "I  know  in 
whom  I  have  believed,  and  am  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to 
keep  that  which  I  have  committed  to  him  against  that  day." 
Whatever  may  be  your  opinion  of  the  apostle's  hope  for 
the  future,  you  must  acknowledge  that  we  have  ascertained, 
beyond  contradiction,  these  four  facts  of  the  past: 

1.  That  without  the  power  of  force,  or  the  help  of  gov- 
ernments, and  in  spite  of  them,  the  apostles  did  convert  vast 
multitudes  of  idolaters  from  a  senseless  worship  of  stocks  and 
stones,  to  the  worship  of  the  one  living  and  true  God;  a 
thing  never  done  by  the  preachers  of  any  other  religion  be- 
fore or  since. 

2.  That  without  the  help  of  power  or  civil  law,  and  solely 
by  moral  and  spiritual  means,  they  did  persuade  multitudes 
of  licentious  heathens  to  give  up  their  vices,  and  obey  the 
pure  precepts  of  the  morality  contained  in  their  Epistles; 
a  thing  never  done  by  the  preachers  of  any  other  religion 
before  or  since. 

3.  That  'these  converts  were  so  firmly  persuaded  of  the 
truth  of  their  new  religion,  that,  with  the  choice  of  life  and 
worldly  honor,  or  a  death  of  infamy  and  torture  before  them, 
multitudes  deliberately  chose  to  suffer  torture  and  death 
rather  than  renounce  the  belief  in  one  Grod,  obedience  to  his 
laws,  and  the  hope  of  eternal  life  through  Jesus  Christ,  which 
they  had  learned  from  the  sermons  and  letters  of  these 
apostles ;  a  thing  never  done  by  the  professors  of  any  other 
religion  before  or  since.* 

*  The  sufferings  of  the  Jews,  under  Antiochus,  are  no  exception. 
They  suffered  for  their  faith  in  the  true  God,  the  Messiah  to  come, 
and  a  resurrection  to  life  eternal. 


IS  THE  GOSPEL  FACT  OR  FABLE  ?  189 

4.  The  faith  which  produced  such  an  illumination  of  their 
minds ;  which  caused  such  a  blessed  change  in  their  lives ; 
which  filled  them  with  joy  and  hope,  and  enabled  them  even 
to  despise  torture  and  death,  was  briefly  this  :  "  That  Christ 
died  for  our  sins,  according  to  the  Scriptures ;  and  that  he  was 
buried,  and  that  he  rose  again  on  the  third  day,  according 
to  the  Scriptures;  that  he  ascended  up  into  heaven,  and 
will  come  again  to  judge  the  world,  and  reward  every  man 
according  to  his  works ;  and  that  whosoever  believes  these 
things  in  his  heart,  and  confesses  them  with  his  mouth,  shall 
be  saved ;  and  he  that  belie veth  them  not  shall  be  damned." 

It  is  a  fact,  then,  indisputably  proven  by  history,  that  the 
New  Testament  does  teach  a  religion  which  can  enlighten 
men's  minds,  reform  their  lives,  give  peace  to  their  con- 
sciences, and  enable  them  to  meet  death  with  a  joyful  hope 
of  life  eternal.  It  has  done  these  things  in  times  past,  and 
is  doing  them  now.  These  are  its  undoubted  fruits.  Reader, 
this  faith  may  be  yours.  It  will  work  the  same  results  in 
you  as  it  has  done  in  others.  Like  causes  ever  produce  like 
effects.  Jesus  waits  to  deliver  you  from  your  sins,  to  fill 
you  with  joy  and  peace  in  believing,  and  make  you  abound 
in  hope,  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  He  has  prom- 
ised, if  you  will  ask  it,  "  I  will  give  them  a  heart  to  know 
me,  that  I  am  the  Lord." 


CHAPTER    yil 


Can  We  Believe  Christ    And  His 
Apostles? 


"  That  which  was  from  the  beginning,  which  we  have  heard, 
which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  which  we  have  looked  upon,  and 
our  hands  have  handled  of  the  Word  of  life  »  *  *  that  which 
we  have  seen  and  heard  declare  we  unto  you."— 1  John  i.  I. 


We  have  seen  that  the  companions  of  Jesus  wrote  the 
books  of  the  New  Testament ;  that  their  statements  of  the 
existence,  worship,  morals,  and  faith  of  the  Christian  Church 
are  confirmed  by  their  enemies,  and  that  multitudes  of 
heathens  were  turned  from  vice  to  virtue  by  the  belief  of 
the  testimony  of  these  men.  They  testified  that  Jesus 
Christ  did  many  wonderful  miracles,  died  for  our  sins,  and 
rose  again  from  the  dead;  that  they  saw,  and  felt  his  body, 
and  ate,  and  drank,  and  conversed  with  him  for  forty  days 
after  his  resurrection;  that  he  ascended  up  to  heaven  in 
their  sight ;  that  he  sent  them  to  tell  the  world  that  he  will 
come  again  in  the  clouds  of  heaven,  with  his  mighty  angels, 
to  judge  the  living  and  the  dead;  that  he  who  believes 
these  things  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved,  but  he  that  be- 
lieveth  not  shall  be  damned.  This  is  their  statement.  The 
question  is,  Can  we  believe  them? 

1.  The  first  thing  which  strikes  us  in  their  testimony  is, 
that  it  stands  out  utterly  different  from  all  other  religions. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  world  like  it,  not  even  its  counter- 
feits.    The  great  central  fact  of  Christianity — that  Christ 

(190) 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?        191 

died  for  our  sins,  and  rose  again  from  the  dead — stands  ab- 
solutely alone  in  the  history  of  religious.  The  priests  of 
Baal,  Brahma,  or  Jupiter,  never  dreamed  of  such  a  thing. 
The  prophets  of  Mohammedanism,  Mormonism,  or  Panthe- 
ism, have  never  attempted  to  imitate  it.  The  great  object 
of  all  counterfeit  Christianity  is  to  deny  it. 

There  is  no  instance  in  the  whole  world's  history  of  any 
other  religion  ever  producing  the  same  effects.  We  demand 
an  instance  of  men  destitute  of  wealth,  arms,  power,  and 
learning,  converting  multitudes  of  lying,  lustful,  murdering 
idolaters,  into  honest,  peaceable,  virtuous  men  simply  by 
prayer  and  preaching.  When  the  Infidel  tells  us  of  the 
rapid  spread  of  Mohammedanism  and  Mormonism — impos- 
tures which  enlist  disciples  by  promising  free  license  to  lust, 
robbery,  and  murder,  and  retain  them  by  the  terror  of  the 
scimeter  and  the  rifle  ball ;  which  reduce  mankind  to  the 
most  abject  servitude,  and  womanhood  to  the  most  debasing 
concubinage  ;  which  have  turned  the  fairest  regions  of  the 
earth  to  a  wilderness,  and  under  whose  blighting  influence 
commerce,  arts,  science,  industry,  comfort,  and  the  human 
race  itself,  have  withered  away — he  simply  insults  our  com- 
mon sense,  by  ignoring  the  difference  between  backgoing 
vice  and  ongoing  virtue;  or  acknowledges  that  he  knows  as 
little  about  Mohammedanism,  as  he  does  about  Christianity. 
The  gospel  stands  alone  in  its  doctrines,  singular  in  its  oper* 
ation,  unequaled  in  its  success. 

2.  The  next  important  point  for  consideration  is,  that  the 
Christianity  preached  by  Christ  and  his  apostles  is  a  whole 
— a  single  system,  which  we  must  either  take  or  leave — be- 
lieve entirely,  or  entirely  reject  it  as  an  imposture.  There 
is  no  middle  ground  for  you  to  occupy.  It  is  all  true,  or 
all  false.  For  instance,  you  can  not  take  one  of  Paul's 
Epistles  and  say,  "this  is  true,"  and  take  another  of  the 
same  man's  letters,  containing  the  very  same  religion,  and 
say,  "  this  is  false.    If  you  accept  the  very  briefest  of  Paul's 


192        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

Letters,  that  to  Philemon,  containing  only  thirteen  sentences 
on  private  business,  you  accept  eleven  distinct  assertions  of 
the  authority,  grace,  love,  and  divinity  of  our  Lord.  Nor 
can  you  say  you  will  accept  Peter's  Letters^  and  reject 
Paul's ;  for  you  will  find  the  very  same  facts  asserted  by 
the  one  as  by  the  other;  and  moreover,  Peter  indorses  "all 
the  epistles  of  our  beloved  brother  Paul"  as  on  the  same 
pedestal  of  authority  with  the  other  Scriptures.  You  can 
not  say,  "I  will  accept  the  letters  and  reject  the  history," 
for  the  letters  have  no  meaning  without  the  history.  They 
are  founded  upon  it,  and  assume  or  allege  its  facts  on  every 
page.  Were  the  gospels  lost,  we  could  collect  a  good  ac- 
count of  the  birth,  teaching,  death,  resurrection,  ascension, 
and  almighty  power  of  the  Lord  Christ  from  Paul's  Epis- 
tles; and  these  letters  are  just  as  confident  in  alleging  the 
miraculous  part  of  the  history  as  the  gospels  themselves. 
Neither  can  you  gain  any  advantage  by  saying,  "  I  accept 
the  gospels,  but  reject  the  letters,"  for  there  is  not  a  doc- 
trine of  the  New  Testament  which  is  not  taught  in  the  very 
first  of  them,  the  Gospel  by  Matthew.  Further,  the  gospels 
contain  the  most  solemn  authentication  of  the  commissions 
of  the  apostles,  so  that  whoever  rejects  their  teaching, 
brings  upon  himself  guilt  equal  to  that  of  rejecting  Christ 
himself.  "  Lo,  I  am  with  you  alway  " — "  He  that  receiveth 
you  receiveth  me,  and  he  that  receiveth  me,  receiveth  him 
that  sent  me" — "Whosoever  will  not  receive  you,  nor  hear 
your  words,  when  ye  depart  out  of  that  house  or  city,  shake 
off  the  dust  of  your  feet.  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  it  shall 
be  more  tolerable  for  the  land  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  in 
the  day  of  judgment,  than  for  that  city." 

It  is,  if  possible,  more  absurd  to  attempt  to  dissect  the 
morality  of  the  gospel  from  its  history,  and  to  say,  "  We  are 
willing  to  receive  the  Christian  code  of  morals  as  a  very  ex- 
cellent rule  of  life,  and  to  regard  Jesus  as  a  rare  example  of 
almost  superhuman  virtue,  but  we  must  consider  the  narra- 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?        193 

live  of  supernatural  events  interwoven  with  it  as  mytholog- 
ical," i.  e.,  false.  Whicli  is  much  the  same  as  to  say,  "We 
will  be  very  happy  to  receive  your  friend  if  he  will  only  cut 
his  head  off."  Of  what  possible  use  would  the  Christian 
code  of  morals  be  without  the  authority  of  Christ,  the  law- 
giver? Tf  he  possessed  no  divine  authority,  what  right  has 
he  to  control  your  inclination  or  mine?  And  if  he  will 
never  return  to  inquire  whether  men  obey  or  disobey  his 
law,  who  will  regard  it?  Do  you  suppose  the  world  will  be 
turned  upside  down,  and  reformed,  by  a  little  good  advice? 
Nay,  verily,  the  world  has  had  trial  of  that  vanity  long 
enough.  "We  must  all  appear  before  the  judgment  seat 
of  Christ,  that  every  one  may  receive  the  things  done  in 
the  body,  according  to  that  he  hath  done,  whether  it  be  good 
or  bad.  Knowing,  therefore,  the  terrors  of  the  Lord,  we 
persuade  men." 

Take  away  the  miraculous  and  supernatural  from  the  gos- 
pel history,  and  there  is  nothing  left  for  you  to  accept. 
There  is  no  political  economy  nor  worldly  morality  in  it.  It 
is  wholly  the  history  of  a  supernatural  person,  and  every 
precept  of  his  morality  comes  with  a  divine  sanction.  Fur- 
ther, you  know  nothing  of  either  his  life  or  his  morality  but 
from  the  gospel  history,  and  if  the  record  of  the  miracles 
which  occupy  three-fourths  of  the  gospels  be  false,  what 
reason  have  you  to  give  any  credit  to  the  remainder?  For, 
as  the  German  commentator,  De  Wette,  well  says,  "The 
only  means  of  acquaintance  with  a  history  is  the  narrative 
we  possess  concerning  it,  and  beyond  that  narrative  the  in- 
terpreter can  not  go.  In  these  Bible  records,  the  narrative 
reports  to  us  only  a  supernatural  course  of  events,  wbich 
we  must  either  receive  or  reject.  If  we  reject  the  narra- 
tive, we  know  nothing  at  all  about  the  event,  and  we  are 
not  justified  in  allowing  ourselves  to  invent  a  natural  course 
of  events  of  which  the  narrative  is  totally  silent."  So,  you 
13 


194        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

see,  you  can  not  make  a  Christ  to  suit  your  taste,  but  must 
just  take  the  Christ  of  the  gospel,  or  reject  him. 

If  you  reject  the  testimony  of  Christ  and  his  apostles  as 
false,  and  say  you  can  not  believe  them  in  matters  of  fact, 
how  can  you  respect  their  morality?  Of  all  the  absurdities 
of  modern  Infidelity,  the  respectful  language  generally  used 
by  its  advocates  in  speaking  of  Christ  and  his  apostles  is 
the  most  inconsistent.  He  claimed  to  be  a  Divine  Person, 
and  professed  to  work  miracles.  The  Infidel  says  he  was 
not  a  Divine  Person,  and  wrought  no  miracles.  The  conse- 
quence is  unavoidable — such  a  pretender  is  a  blasphemous 
impostor.  And  yet  they  speak  of  him  as  a  "model  man," 
an  "  exemplar  of  every  virtue."  What !  an  impostor  a  model 
man?  A  blasphemer  and  liar  an  exemplar  of  every  virtue? 
Is  that  the  Infidel's  notion  of  virtue?  Why,  the  devils  were 
more  consistent  in  their  commendations  of  his  character,"  We 
know  thee  who  thou  art,  the  Holy  One  of  God."  Let  our 
modern  enemies  of  Christ  learn  consistency  from  their  an- 
cient allies.  We  have  also  learned  from  our  Master  to  refuse 
all  hypocritical,  half-way  professions  of  respect  for  his  char- 
acter and  teachings  from  those  whose  business  is  to  prove  him 
a  deceiver,  and  whose  object  in  speaking  respectfully  of  such 
a  One  can  only  be  to  gain  a  larger  audience,  and  a  readier 
entrance  for  their  blasphemy  among  his  professed  disciples, 
j'rom  every  man  who  professes  respect  for  Christ's  character, 
and  for  the  morality  which  he  and  his  apostles  taught,  we 
lemand  a  straightforward  answer  to  the  questions:  "When 
lie  declared  himself  the  Son  of  God,  the  Judge  of  the  living 
!nd  the  dead,  did  he  tell  the  truth,  or  did  he  lie?  When  he 
)romised  to  attest  his  divine  commission  by  rising  from  the 
'cad  on  the  third  day,  had  he  any  such  power,  or  did  he 

nly  mean  to   play  a  juggling   imposture?     Is  Jesus   the 

hrist  the  Son  of  the  Living  God,  or  a  deceiver?"  There 
is  no  middle  ground.     He  that  is  not  with  him  is  against 

im. 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  IIIS  APOSTLES?        195 

The  case  is  just  the  same  with  regard  to  the  witnesses  of 
his  miracles,  death,  and  resurrection.  They  either  give  a 
true  relation  of  these  things,  or  they  have  manufactured  a 
series  of  falsehoods.  How  can  we  believe  anything  from 
persons  so  habituated  to  lying  as  the  narrators  of  the  mighty 
works  of  Jesus  must  be,  if  those  mighty  works  never  were 
performed?  How  can  we  accept  their  code  of  morals  if  we 
refuse  to  believe  them  when  they  speak  of  matters  of  fact? 
Is  it  possible  to  respect  men  as  moral  teachers,  whom  we 
have  convicted  of  forging  stories  of  miracles  that  never  oc- 
curred, and  confederating  together  to  impose  a  lying  super- 
stition on  the  world?  For  this  is  plainly  the  very  point  and 
center  of  the  question  about  the  truth  of  the  Bible,  and  I 
am  anxious  you  should  see  it  clearly.  A  fair  statement  of 
this  question  is  half  the  argument.  The  question  then  is 
simply  this.  Was  Jesus  really  the  Divine  Person  he  claimed 
to  be,  or  was  he  a  blasphemous  impostor?  "When  the  apos- 
tles unitedly  and  solemnly  testified  that  they  had  seen  him 
after  he  was  risen  from  the  dead,  that  they  ate  and  drank 
with  him,  that  their  hands  had  handled  his  body,  that  they 
conversed  with  him  for  forty  days,  and  that  they  saw  him 
go  up  to  heaven,  did  they  tell  the  truth  or  were  they  a  con- 
federated band  of  liars?  There  is  no  reason  for  any  other 
supposition.  They  could  not  possibly  be  deceived  them- 
selves in  the  matters  they  relate.  They  knew  perfectly 
whether  they  were  true  or  not.  We  are  not  talking  about 
matters  of  dogma,  about  which  there  might  be  room  for 
difference  of  opinion,  but  about  matters  of  fact — about 
what  men  say  they  saw,  and  heard,  and  felt — about  which 
no  man  of  common  sense  could  possibly  be  mistaken.  "  That 
which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  which  we  have  heard, 
which  we  have  looked  upon,  and  our  hands  have  handled  of 
the  Word  of  life  *  ^  *  that  which  we  have  seen  and 
heard  declare  we  unto  you."  Such  is  their  language.  AVe 
must  either  take  it  as  truth,  or  reject  it  as  falsehood.     It  is 


196        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

Utter  nonsense  to  talk  of  the  intense  subjectivity  of  the 
Jewish  mind,  and  the  belief  of  the  apostles  that  the  Mes- 
siah would  do  wonders  when  he  came,  and  the  powerful  im- 
pressions produced  by  the  teaching  of  Jesus  on  their  minds. 
We  are  not  talking  about  impressions  on  their  minds,  but 
about  impressions  produced  on  their  eyes,  and  ears,  and 
hands.  Did  these  men  tell  the  truth  when  they  told  the 
world  that  they  did  eat  and  drink  with  Jesus  after  he  rose 
from  the  dead,  or  did  they  lie?     That  is  the  question. 

3.  It  is  a  hard  matter  to  lie  well.  A  liar  has  need  of  a 
good  memory,  else  he  will  contradict  himself  before  he 
writes  far.  And  he  needs  to  be  very  well  posted  up  in  the 
matters  of  names,  dates,  places,  manners  and  customs,  else 
he  will  contradict  some  well-known  facts,  and  so  expose  his 
forgery  to  the  world.  Therefore  writers  of  forgeries  avoid 
all  such  things  as  much  as  possible,  and  as  surely  as  they 
venture  on  specifications  of  that  sort  they  are  detected. 
A  man  who  is  conscious  of  writing  a  book  of  falsehoods 
docs  not  bogin  on  this  wise :  *'  Now  in  the  fifteenth  year  of 
the  reign  of  Tiberius  Caesar,  Pontius  Pilate  being  Governor 
of  Judea,  and  Herod  being  Tetrarch  of  Galilee,  and  his 
brother  Philip  Tetrarch  of  Iturea  and  of  the  regions  of 
Trachonitis,  and  Lysanias  Tetrarch  of  Abilene,  Annas  and 
C.iphas  being  high  priests,  the  Word  of  God  came  unto 
John,  the  son  of  Zacharias,  in  the  wilderness."  Here  in 
one  sentence  are  twenty  historical,  geographical,  political, 
and  genealogical  references,  every  one  of  which  we  can  con- 
firm by  references  to  secular  historians.  The  enemies  of 
the  Lord  have  utterly  failed  in  their  attempts  to  disprove 
one  out  of  the  hundreds  of  such  statements  in  the  New 
Testament.  The  only  instance  of  any  puhlic  political  event 
recorded  in  the  gospel,  said  not  to  be  confirmed  by  the  frag- 
ments of  secular  history  we  possess,  is  Luke's  account  of  a 
census  of  the  Roman  Empire,  ordered  by  Augustus  Caesar. 
Were  it  so  that  Luke  stood  alone  in  his  mention  of  this, 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?        197 

surely  his  credit  as  a  historian  would  be  as  good  for  this 
fact,  as  the  credit  of  Tacitus,  when  he  states  matters  of 
which  Suetonius  makes  no  mention,  or  of  Pliny,  when  he 
relates  things  not  recorded  by  Tacitus.  But  we  can  account 
for  the  want  of  corroborative  history  in  this  instance,  when 
we  know  that  all  the  history  of  Dion  Cassius,  from  the  con- 
sulships of  Antistius  and  Balbus  to  those  of  Messala  and 
Cinna — that  is,  for  five  years  before  and  five  years  after  the 
birth  of  Christ — is  lost;  as  also  Livy's  history  of  the  same 
period.  It  is  certain  that  some  one  did  record  the  fact,  for 
Suidas,  in  his  lexicon  upon  the  word  apographe^  says,  "that 
Augustus  sent  twenty  select  men  into  all  the  provinces  of 
the  empire  to  take  a  census,  both  of  men  and  property,  and 
commanded  that  a  just  proportion  of  the  latter  should  be 
brought  into  the  imperial  treasury.  And  this  was  the  first 
census." 

To  object  to  the  gospel  history,  that  everything  contained 
in  it  of  the  doings  of  Christ  and  his  apostles  in  Judea,  is 
not  recorded  by  the  historians  of  Greece  and  Italy,  is  much 
the  same  as  to  say  that  there  are  a  multitude  of  facts  re- 
corded in  D'Aubigne's  History  of  the  Reformation  in  Ger- 
many, of  which  Hume  and  Macaulay  make  no  mention  in 
their  histories  of  England.  How  should  they? — treating  of 
different  countries,  and  for  the  most  part  of  different  per- 
iods, and  writing  civil  and  not  church  history?  Does  any- 
body go  to  Macaulay  to  look  for  the  history  of  the  West- 
minster Assembly,  or  to  Bancroft  for  an  account  of  the 
Great  Revival  in  New  England?  Or  is  the  veracity  of 
Baillie,  or  Edwards  suspected,  because  political  history  does 
not  concern  itself  much  about  religion?  It  is  enough  that 
not  a  single  statement  of  the  gospel  history  has  ever  been 
disproved. 

I  might  give  you  quotations  from  the  enemies  of  the 
Christian  faith,  from  Josephus  the  Jew,  and  Celsus,  and 
Porphyry,  heathen   philosophers,  and  from   the   Emperor 


198        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

Julian,  tlie  apostate — who,  having  been  raided  a  Christian, 
hecame  a  heathen,  and  used  all  his  ingenuity  to  overturn  the 
religion  of  Christ — expres.sly  admitting  the  principal  mira- 
cles recorded  in  the  gospel.  But  I  attach  no  such  impor- 
tance to  the  testimony  of  this  class  of  persons  as  to  sup- 
pose that  it  should  be  placed,  for  one  moment,  on  a  level 
with  the  testimony  of  the  apostles,  or  that  their  testimony 
to  the  facts  of  the  life  and  death  of  Christ  needs  any  con- 
firmation from  such  witne.-ses.  We  have  such  overwhelm- 
ing evidence  of  the  sincerity  and  truth  of  the  witnesses 
chosen  by  God  to  bear  testimony  to  the  resurrection  of 
Christ,  as  we  never  can  have  of  the  credibility  of  any  secu- 
lar historian  whatever. 

You  will  remember  that  these  are  the  writers  whose  ac- 
counts of  the  existence,  the  faith  and  worship,  the  numbers 
and  morals  of  the  Christian  Church,  we  have  seen  so  strik- 
ingly confirmed  by  their  enemies ;  and  we  now  inquire,  Can 
we  believe  the  other  part  of  their  history  to  be  as  true? 
These  are  the  men  who  taught  the  heathen  a  pure  Christian 
morality,  one  principal  article  of  which  was,  "  Lie  not  one 
to  another,  seeing  ye  have  put  off  the  old  man  with  his 
deeds" — "All  liars  shall  have  their  portion  in  the  lake  that 
burneth  with  fire  and  brimstone  " — and  we  are  to  inquire  if 
they  themselves  lied ;  lied  publicly,  lied  repeatedly,  if  the 
very  business  of  their  lives  was  to  propagate  falsehood,  and 
if  they  died  with  a  lie  in  their  right  hands.  You  will  re- 
member that  we  proved  conclusively  that  the  belief  of  the 
death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  did  turn  immense  multi- 
tudes of  wicked  men  to  a  lile  of  virtue,  and  now  we  are  to 
inquire  if  the  belief  of  a  lie  produced  this  blessed  result, 
and  whether,  if  so,  there  be  any  such  thing  as  truth  in  the 
world,  or  any  use  in  it? 

4.  Of  no  other  series  of  events  of  ancient  history  do  we 
possess  the  same  number  of  records  by  contemporary  his- 
torians, as  of  the  life,  death,  and  resurrection  of  the  Lord 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?        199 

Jesus.  We  have  four  direct  systematic  memoirs  of  him 
by  four  of  his  companions;  and  we  have  a  collection  of  let- 
ters by  four  others,  in  which  the  events  of  the  memoirs  are 
continually  referred  to.  At  the  mouth  of  two  or  three 
witnesses  any  man's  property  and  life  will  be  disposed  of  in 
a  court  of  justice,  but  here  we  have  the  testimony  of  eight 
eye-witnesses  of  the  facts  they  relate,  and  they  refer  to  five 
hundred  other  persons,  the  greater  part  of  whom  were  then 
alive,  who  had  also  seen  and  heard  Christ  after  his  resur- 
rection. These  eight  persons  give  us  their  separate  and 
independent  statements  of  those  things  they  deemed  worthy 
of  record  in  the  life  and  death  of  Christ,  and  of  the  say- 
ings and  doings  of  several  of  his  friends  and  enemies.  Now 
every  person  knows  that  it  is  impossible  to  make  two  crooked 
boughs  tally,  or  two  false  witnesses  agree.  You  never  saw 
two  lying  reports  of  any  considerable  number  of  transac- 
tions agree,  unless  the  one  was  copied  from  the  other. 

It  is  evident  that  the  gospels  were  not  copied  from  each 
other,  for  they  often  relate  different  events,  and  when  they 
relate  the  same  occurrence,  each  man  relates  those  parts  of 
it  which  he  saw  himself,  and  which  impressed  him  most. 
Yet  the  utmost  ingenuity  of  infidelity  has  utterly  failed  to 
make  them  contradict  each  other  in  any  particular.  Here 
are  eight  witnesses  to  the  truth  of  the  same  story,  four  of 
whom  in  their  letters  make  occasional  allusions  to  the  facts 
of  the  history  as  being  perfectly  well  known,  and  therefore 
needing  only  to  be  alluded  to,  yet  these  cursory  references 
fit  into  the  history  with  every  mark  of  truthfulness.  Does 
the  history  of  Matthew,  written  at  Jerusalem,  tell  us  that 
Jesus  took  Peter,  and  James,  and  John  up  into  a  high 
mountain  apart,  and  was  transfigured  before  them?  Peter, 
in  his  letter,  written  from  Babylon,  says,  "  We  were  eye- 
witnesses of  his  majesty.  We  were  with  him  in  the  holy 
mount." — 2  Peter  ii.  10.  If  the  history  tells  how  Paul 
was  beaten  and  cast  into  prison  at  Philippi,  and  his  feet 


200        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

made  fast  in  the  stocks,  and  that,  nevertheless,  he  manfully 
defended  his  birthright  as  a  E-oman  citizen,  and  made  the 
tyrannical  magistrates  humble  themselves,  and  apologize  for 
their  illegal  conduct,  we  find  Paul  himself,  in  a  letter  to  a 
neighboring  church,  appealing  to  their  knowledge  of  the 
facts,  "  that  after  we  had  suffered  before,  and  were  shame- 
fully entreated,  as  ye  know,  at  Philippi,  we  were  bold  in  our 
God  to  speak  unto  you  the  gospel  of  God  with  much  con- 
tention. For  our  exhortation  was  not  of  deceit,  nor  of  un- 
cleanness,  nor  in  guile.  For  neither  at  any  time  used  we 
flattering  words,  as  ye  know,  nor  a  cloak  for  covetousness." 
— -1*  Thessalonians  ii.  2.  Hundreds  of  such  undesiorned 
coincidences  may  be  found  in  the  New  Testament,  confirm- 
ing the  veracity  of  the  several  historians  and  letter  writers, 
and  giving  that  impression  of  the  naturalness  and  truth  of 
the  story,  which  can  neither  be  described  nor  disputed.  The 
reader  who  desires  to  prosecute  this  interesting  branch  of 
the  evidences  of  Christianity  will  find  an  ample  collection 
of  these  coincidences  in  Paley's  Horae  Paulinas. 

This  agreement  of  independent  writers  is  the  more  re- 
markable, as  the  writers  were  persons  of  very  various  degrees 
of  education,  of  different  professions  and  ranks  of  life,  born 
in  different  countries,  and  writing  from  various  places  in 
Italy,  Greece,  Palestine,  and  Assyria,  without  any  commu- 
nication with  each  other.  Matthew  was  an  officer  of  cus- 
toms in  Galilee ;  Mark  a  Hebrew  citizen  of  Jerusalem ; 
Luke  a  Greek  physician  of  Antioch;  James  and  John 
owned  and  sailed  a  fishing  smack  on  Lake  Tiberias ;  Jude 
left  his  thirty-nine  acres  of  land,  worth  nine  thousand  de- 
narii, to  be  farmed  by  his  children  when  he  went  forth  to 
preach  the  gospel ;  and  college-bred  Paul  carried  his  sturdy 
independence  in  his  breast,  and  his  ^ail  needles  in  his  pocket, 
and  dictated  epistles,  and  cut  out  marquees  and  lug-sails  in 
the  tent  factory  of  Aquila,  Paul  &  Co.,  at  Corinth.  Sever- 
al of  his  letters  were  written  in  a  dungeon  in  Home;  the 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?        201 

last  of  Pater's  is  dated  at  Babylon ;  Matthew's  Gospel  was 
penned  at  Jerusalem,  and  John's  Crospel  and  Epistles  were 
written  at  Ephesus.  The  agreement  of  eight  such  wit- 
nesses, of  such  different  pursuits,  and  so  scattered  over  the 
world,  in  the  relation  of  the  same  story,  in  all  its  leading 
particulars,  together  with  their  variety  of  style  and  manner, 
and  their  various  relations  of  minor  incidents,  yet  without 
a  single  contradiction,  are  most  convincing  proofs  that  they 
all  tell  truth.  Nothing  but  truth  could  be  thus  told  with- 
out contradiction. 

The  fact  that  some  considerable  difficulties  and  many  mi- 
nor obscurities  in  these  brief  though  pregnant  narratives, 
prevent  the  combination  of  eight  accounts  so  independent 
in  their  sources,  and  various  in  their  style,  and  design,  and 
auditors,  into  a  flowing  historical  novel,  a  homogeneous 
mass,  rounded  and  squared  to  our  ideas  of  mathematical 
precision,  is  only  an  additional  proof  of  their  truth  to  na- 
ture, which  abhors  mathematical,  as  much  as  truth  does 
rhetorical  figures.  Like  the  variety  of  expression  used  by 
American,  German,  French,  and  Polish  witnesses  in  our 
courts  of  justice,  testifying  the  same  facts  in  their  native 
idioms,  though  in  English  words,  the  apparent  discrepancy, 
but  actual  harmony,  becomes  the  most  decisive  test  of  the 
absence  of  any  collusion,  and  consequently  of  the  verity  of 
the  facts  which  such  various  witnesses  unite  in  testiTying. 
Especially  will  any  such  apparent  discrepancy  resolve  itself 
into  our  own  unskillfulness  or  ignorance,  when  we  remem- 
ber that  the  mists  of  ages,  and  the  drapery  of  a  strange 
language,  and  world-wide  removal  of  residence,  and  the 
turning  of  the  world  upside  down  by  the  progress  of  Chris- 
tian civilization,  and  our  consequent  ignorance  of  the  thou- 
sand little  details  of  every-day  life,  well  known  to  the 
writer  and  his  immediate  readers,  and  of  the  fore  of  ex- 
pressive idioms,  perfectly  familiar  to  them — have  rendered 
us  not  near  so  capable  of  detecting  inaccuracies,  as  those 


202       CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

contemporary  writers  and  opponents,  who  allowed  them — 
if  they  existed — to  pass  unchallenged.     Like  those  antique 
coins,  whose  rust-dimmed  and  abbreviated  inscriptions  ex- 
ercise  the  patience  and  historic   lore  of  the  antiquarian, 
though  neither  are  needed  to  declare  the  precious  material, 
this  very  rust  of  antiquity,  through  which  his  patience  has 
penetrated,  becomes  one  of  the  inimitable  marks  of  historic 
verity.     Every  year  throws  some  new  light  on  texts  diffi- 
cult to  us  from  our  ignorance  of  those  manners,  customs, 
names,  and  places,  which  Infidel  malice  and  Christian  piety 
have  combined  to  explore ;  and  from  the  ruins  of  Nineveh 
and  the  sepulchers  of  Egypt  we  receive  unlooked-for  testi- 
monies to  the  minute  accuracy  of  the  penmen  of  the  Bible. 
5.  The  manner  in  which  the  apostles  published  their  tes- 
timony to   the   world  bears   every   mark   of   truthfulness. 
Deception  and  forgery  skulk,  and  try  to  spread  themselves 
at  first  in  holes  and  corners,  but  he  that  doeth  truth  cometh 
to  the  light.     Had  the  apostles  been  conscious  of  falsehood, 
would  they  have  dared  to  assert  that  Jesus  was  risen  from 
the  dead  in  the  very  streets  of  the  city  where  he  was  cruci- 
fied? in  the  temple,  the  most  public  place  of  resort  of  the 
Jews  who  saw  him  crucified?  and  to  the  teeth  of  the  very 
men   who  put  him  to  death?     If  conscious  of  falsehood, 
would  they  have  dared,  before  the  chief  priests,  and  the 
council,  and  all  the  senate  of  Israel,  to  assert  that  "  The 
God  of  our  fathers  raised  up  Jesus,  whom   ye   slew  and 
hanged  on  a  tree.     Him  hath  God  exalted  with  his  right 
hand  to  be  a  Prince  and  a  Savior,  to  give  repentance  to 
Israel,  and  remission  of  sins.     And  we  are  his  witnesses  of 
these  things,  and  so  is  also  the  Holy  Ghost  which  God  hath 
given  to  them  that  obey  him." — Acts  v.  30.     Would  Paul, 
had  he  been  conscious  that  he  was  relating  falsehood,  have 
dared  to  appeal  to  the  judge,  before  whom  he  was  on  trial 
for  his  life,  as  to  one  who  knew  the  notoriety  of  these  facts, 
"  For  the  king  knoweth  of  these  things,  before  whom  also 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?       203 

I  speak  freely ;  for  I  am  persuaded  that  none  of  these  things 
are  hidden  from  him :  for  this  thing  was  not  done  in  a  cor- 
ner."— Acts  xxvi.  26.  Would  such  appeals  have  been  suf- 
fered to  pass  uncontradicted  had  the  statements  of  the 
apostles  been  false? 

The  boldness  of  their  manner,  however,  of  telling  their 
story,  is  little,  compared  with  the  boldness  of  the  design 
which  they  had  in  view  in  telling  it;  which  was  nothing 
less  than  to  convert  the  world.  Now  the  idea  of  proselyt- 
ing other  nations  to  a  new  religion  was  absolutely  unknown 
to  the  world  at  that  time.  The  Greeks  and  Romans  never 
dreamed  of  any  such  thing.  They  would  sometimes  add  a 
new  god  to  their  old  Pantheon,  but  the  idea  of  turning  a 
nation  to  the  worship  of  new  deities  was  never  before  heard 
of.  The  Jews  were  so  indignant  at  the  project,  that  when 
Paul  hinted  it  to  them,  they  cried,  "Away  with  such  a  fel- 
low from  the  earth,  for  it  is  not  fit  that  he  should  live." 
And  this  new  and  strange  idea,  of  conquering  the  world  for 
a  crucified  man,  is  taken  up  by  a  few  private  citizens,  who 
resolve  to  overturn  the  craft  by  which  priests  have  their 
wealth,  and  to  bring  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  to  become 
the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  his  Christ. 

Impostors  would  never  have  appealed  to  their  power  of 
working  miracles  as  the  apostles  did ;  nor  could  enthusiasts 
have  done  so  without  instant  exposure.  It  is  remarkable, 
that  while  in  addressing  those  who  believed  their  divine 
commission,  they  rarely  allude  to  it  (fourteen  of  the  epis- 
tles make  no  allusion  to  apostolic  miracles),  but  dwell  on  a 
subject  of  far  greater  importance — a  holy  life — they  never 
hesitate  to  confront  a  Simon  Magus,  or  a  schismatieal  church 
at  Corinth,  or  a  persecuting  high  priest  and  sanhedrim  with 
this  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  "Tongues,"  says  Paul,  "are 
for  a  sign,  not  to  them  that  believe,  but  to  them  that  believe 
not;"  and  this  is  true  of  all  other  miracles.  This  marks 
the  difi'erence  between  real  miracles  and  those  of  pretend- 


204       CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

ers;  who  have  never  attempted  to  establish  a  new  religion 
by  them,  or  to  convert  unbelievers  hostile  to  their  claims 
and  able  to  examine  them,  without  immediate  exposure. 
Bat  you  never  heard  of  an  impostor  standing  up  before  the 
tribunal  of  his  judges  and  alleging  the  miraculous  cure  of 
a  well-known  public  beggar,  lame  from  his  mother's  womb, 
whom  they  had  seen  at  the  church  gate  every  Sabbath  for 
forty  years,  and  bringing  the  man  into  court  after  such  a 
fashion  as  this,  "  If  we  this  day  be  examined  of  the  good 
deed  done  unto  the  impotent  man,  by  what  means  he  is 
made  whole,  be  it  known  unto  you  all,  and  to  all  the  people 
of  Israel,  that  by  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  of  Nazareth, 
whom  ye  crucified,  whom  God  raised  from  the  dead,  even 
by  him  doth  this  man  stand  before  you  whole."  Such  an 
appeal  was  unanswerable.  "Beholding  the  man  that  was 
healed  standing  with  them,  they  could  say  nothing  against 
it."  Nay,  they  were  compelled  to  acknowledge  "  that  in- 
deed a  notable  miracle  hath  been  done  by  them  is  manifest 
to  all  them  that  dwell  in  Jerusalem — we  can  not  deny  it." — 
Acts  iv. 

The  denial  of  the  miracles  of  the  gospel  is  a  modern  in- 
vention of  the  enemy.  The  scribes,  and  priests,  emperors, 
and  philosophers  of  the  first  centuries,  who  had  the  best 
opportunity  of  proving  their  falsehood,  were  unable  to  do 
so.  The  persecutors  and  apostates,  whose  malice  against 
the  Church  knew  no  bounds,  never  dared  to  utter  a  charge 
of  deception  against  the  apostles.  Why,  then,  you  ask,  did 
they  not  all  become  Christians?  Because  miracles  can  not 
convert  any  man  against  his  will.  Christianity  is  not  merely 
a  belief  in  miracles,  but  the  love  of  Christ,  and  a  life  of 
holiness.  There  are  many  readers  of  this  book  who  would 
not  turn  from  their  sins  if  all  the  dead  in  Spring  Grove 
Cemetery  would  rise  to-morrow  to  warn  them  from  hell. 
God  does  not  intend  to  force  any  man  to  become  a  Christian. 
He  just  gives  evidence  enough  to  try  you,  whether  you  will 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?       205 

deal  honestly  and  fairly  with  your  own  soul  and  your  God, 
and  if  you  are  determined  to  hate  Christ  and  his  holy  re- 
li^^ion,  you  shall  never  want  a  plausible  excuse  for  unbelief; 
as  it  U  written,  ''  Unto  them  which  are  disobedient,  Chriot 
is  a  stone  of  stumbling  and  a  rock  of  offense."  These 
ancient  enemies  of  Christ  aiknowlodged  the  reality  of  his 
miracle;:^,  but  attributed  them  to  magical  power,  or  the  help 
of  Satan.  The  Jews  said  that  he  had  acquired  the  power 
of  miracles  by  learning  to  pronounce  the  incommunicable 
name  of  God.  Modern  Infidels  deny  all  his  miracles  save 
the  greatest — the  turning  of  men  from  their  sins.  They 
can  not  deny  that;  they  can  not  ascribe  it  to  the  power  of 
Satan  or  of  magic,  for  they  do  not  believe  in  either;  but 
they  follow  as  nearly  in  the  footsteps  of  their  fathers  as 
possible,  when  they  tell  us  that  multitudes  of  men,  in  every 
age,  and  in  every  land,  have  been  turned  from  faliehood  to 
truth  by  the  belief  of  a  lie,  and  from  vice  to  virtue  by  the 
example  oP  an  impostor! 

G.  But  the  strongest  proof  of  the  truth  of  the  facts  of 
the  gospel  is  the  existence,  the  labors  and  sufferings  of  the 
apostles  themselves.  Nobody  denies  that  such  men  lived, 
and  preached,  and  were  persecuted  on  account  of  their 
preaching  that  Jesus  died  and  rose  again.  Now,  if  this 
was  a  falsehood,  what  motive  had  they  to  tell  it?  It  was 
very  displeasing  to  their  rulers  who  had  crucified  him,  and 
who  had  every  inclination  to  give  them  the  same  treatment. 
To  preach  another  king,  one  Jesus,  to  the  Romans,  was  to 
bring  down  the  power  of  the  empire  upon  them.  Nothing 
could  be  more  absurd  in  the  eyes  of  the  Grecian  philoso- 
phers than  to  speak  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body.  Nor 
could  any  plan  be  devised  more  certain  to  arouse  the  fury 
of  the  pagan  priesthood,  than  to  denounce  the  craft  by 
which  they  had  their  wealth,  and  to  preach  that  they  are  no 
gods  which  are  made  by  hands.  The  most  degraded  wretch, 
who  perishes  by  the  hand  of  the  hangman  is  not  so  con- 


203        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

lemptible  in  our  eyes,  as  the  crucified  malefactor  was  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Roman  people ;  nor  coulJ  anything  more  disa- 
L;reeable  to  the  Jewish  nation  be  invented  than  the  decla- 
ration^ that  the  Gentiles  should  become  partakers  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  What  then  should  induce  any  man  in 
his  senses  to  provoke  such  an  opposition  to  a  new  religion, 
and  to  make  it  so  contemptible  and  disagreeable  to  those 
w!iom  he  sought  to  convert,  if  he  were  manufacturing  a  lie 
t )  gain  power  and  popularity? 

The  religion  they  preached  was  not  adapted  to  please 
s:!nsual  men,  nor  to  allow  its  preachers  in  sensual  gratifica- 
tions. ''Our  exhortation,"  says  Paul — and  every  reader  of 
the  New  Testament  knows  that  he  says  truth — "  Our  ex- 
hortation was  not  of  deceit,  nor  of  un  cleanness,  nor  of 
guile."  Infidels  admit  that  they  preached  a  pure  morality. 
But  it  is  a  long  time  since  men  learned  the  proverb,  '•  Phy- 
sician, heal  thyself."  "  Thou  that  preachest  a  man  should 
not  steal,  dost  thou  steal  ?  Thou  that  sayest  a  man  should 
not  commit  adultery,  dost  thou  commit  adultery?  Thou 
that  abhorrest  idols,  dost  thou  commit  sacrilege  ? "  It 
could  not,  then,  be  to  obtain  license  for  lust  that  these  men 
preached  holiness. 

There  is  only  one  other  conceivable  motive  which  should 
induce  men  to  confederate  together  for  the  propagation  of 
ii  Isehood — the  design  of  making  money  by  it.  But  their 
new  religion  made  no  provision  for  any  such  thing.  One  of 
their  first  acts  was  to  desire  the  church  to  elect  deacons 
who  might  manage  its  money  matters,  and  allow  them  to 
give  themselves  wholly  to  prayer  and  to  the  ministry  of  the 
word.  Twenty-five  years  after  that  they  could  appeal  to 
the  world  that  "  Even  to  this  present  hour,  we"  (the  Apos- 
tles) "  both  hunger  and  thirst,  and  are  naked,  and  are  buf- 
feted, and  have  no  certain  dwelling-place,  and  labor  work- 
ing with  our  hands;  being  reviled,  we  bless;  being  perse- 
cuted, we  suffer  it:    we  are  counted  as  the  filth  of  the 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  UIS  APOSTLES  ?       207 

world,  and  tlie  offscouring  of  all  things  to  this  day."  Their 
book  opens  with  the  story  of  their  Master's  birth  in  a  sta- 
ble, with  the  manger  for  his  cradle,  and  one  of  its  last  pic- 
tures is  that  of  his  venerable  apostle  chained  in  a  dungeon, 
and  begging  his  friend  to  bring  his  old  cloak  from  Troas, 
and  to  do  his  diligence  to  come  before  winter. 

Unpopular,  pure,  and  penniless,  if  the  gospel  story  were 
not  true,  how  could  it  have  had  preachers?  They  at  least 
believed  it. 

The  last  and  most  convincing  testimony  which  any  man 
can  give  to  the  truth  of  a  statement  of  fact  is  to  suiFer 
rather  than  deny  it.  Many  have  wondere  1  why  God  al- 
lowed his  dear  servants  to  suffer  so  mur  h  peroe3ution  in  the 
first  ages  of  the  Church.  One  principal  reason  was  to  give 
future  ages  an  irresistible  proof  of  the  sincerity  and  faith- 
fulness of  the  witnesses  for  Christ.  The  apostles  lived 
lives  of  persecution  and  suffering  for  the  name  of  Jejus; 
sufferings  which  they  might  have  avoided  if  they  had  only 
abstained  from  prea  hing  any  more  in  this  name.  But,  said 
they,  "We  can  not  but  speak  of  the  things  which  we  have 
seen  and  heard."  One  who  had  no  personal  acquaintance 
with  Jesu^,  and  whoie  first  interview  with  him  was  while 
he  was  breathing  out  threatening  and  slaughter  against  the 
disciples  of  the  Lord,  is  converted  and  called  to  be  an  apos- 
tle; and  behold  the  prospect  Jesus  presents  to  him,  "I  will 
show  him  lioio  great  tilings  he  must  suffer  for  my  name.^^ 
"  The  Holy  Ghost  testifieth,"  says  Paul,  "  that  in  every  city 
bonds  and  afflictions  abide  me.  Yet  none  of  these  things 
move  me."  That  at  least  was  a  true  prophecy.  "Seven 
times,"  says  Clement,  "he  was  in  bonds,  he  was  whipt,  he 
was  stoned ;  he  preached  both  in  the  East  and  West,  leav- 
ing behind  him  the  glorious  report  of  his  faith,  and  so  hav- 
ing taught  the  whole  world  righteousness,  and  for  that  end 
traveled  even  to  the  utmost  bounds  of  the  West,  he  at  last 
Buffered  martyrdom  by  the  command  of  the  governors,  and 


208        CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ? 

went  to  his  holy  pla?e,  having  become  a  most  eminent  pat- 
tern of  patience  to  all  ages."^  Hear  his  own  appeal  to 
those  who  envied  his  authority  in  the  church,  "Are  they 
ministers  of  Christ,  I  am  more :  in  labors  more  abundant, 
in  stripes  above  measure,  in  prisons  more  frequent,  in  deaths 
often.  Of  the  Jews  five  times  received  I  forty  stripes  save 
one.  Thrice  was  I  beaten  with  rods,  once  was  I  stoned, 
thrice  I  sufTered  shipwreck,  a  night  and  a  day  I  have  been 
in  the  deep:  in  journeyings  o'ten,  in  perils  of  waters,  in 
perils  of  robbers,  in  perils  by  my  own  countrymen,  in  perils 
by  the  heathen,  in  perils  in  the  city,  in  perils  in  the  wilder- 
ness, in  perils  in  the  sea,  in  perils  among  false  brethren ;  in 
wearine  s  and  painfalness,  in  watchings  often,  in  hunger  and 
thirst,  in  cold  and  nakedness.'* — 1  Corinthians  ii.  23. 

Man  can  give  no  higher  proof  of  his  veracity,  than  a  life 
such  as  this,  unless  it  is  to  seal  it  with  his  blood ;  and  this 
crowning  testimony  to  the  truth  the  apostles  gave.  Save 
the  aged  disciple,  who,  after  torments  worse  than  death, 
survived  to  address  the  persecuted  church  as,  "  Your  com- 
panion in  tribulation,  and  in  the  kingdom  and  patience  of 
Jesus  Christ,"  they  all  sufi"ered  martyrdom  for  the  truth  of 
the  gospel  history. 

Let  me  again  remind  you  that  the  gospel  is  not  a  collec- 
tion of  dogmas,  but  a  relation  of  facts ;  that  these  twelve 
men  did  not  preach  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus, 
because  they  had  read  them  in  a  creed,  but  because  they 
had  seen  them  with  their  own  eyes;  that  they  lived  holy 
lives  of  toil,  and  hardship,  and  poverty,  and  suffering,  in 
preaching  these  facts  to  the  world;  and  that  they  died 
painful  and  shameful  deaths  as  martyrs  for  their  truth.  You 
admit  these  things.  Then  I  demand  of  you,  "What  more 
could  either  God  or  man  do  to  convince  you  of  their  truth- 
fulness?" 


Wake's  Trans,  of  Clement,  Ep.  ad  Cor.  v. 


CAN  WE  BELIEVE  CHRIST  AND  HIS  APOSTLES  ?       209 

The  faithful  and  true  witness  himself  has  given  you  this 
last,  undeniable  test  of  veracity.  With  the  certainty  of  an 
ignominious  death  before  him,  he  solemnly  swears  to  the 
truth  of  this  fact,  and  dies  for  it.  "And  the  high  priest 
answered  and  said  unto  him,  I  adjure  thee  by  the  living 
God,  that  thou  tell  us  whether  thou  be  the  Christ,  the  Sou 
of  God?  Jesus  saith  unto  him.  Thou  hast  said.  Hereafter 
ye  shall  see  the  Son  of  Man  sitting  on  the  right  hand  of 
power,  and  coming  in  the  clouds  of  heaven." 

Unbeliever,  are  you  prepared  to  meet  him  there,  and 
prove  him  a  perjured  impostor? 

14 


CHAPTER    Yin. 


Pl\OPHECY. 


"  In  fifty  years  all  Europe  will  be  either  Cossack,  or  Re- 
publican." So  prophesied  the  most  sagacious  of  modern 
politicians,  by  the  inspiration  of  genius,  calculating  the 
prospects  of  the  future  by  the  light  of  his  past  experience. 
This  prediction  of  Napoleon's  is  a  very  fair  specimen  of  the 
oracles  of  human  sagacity;  which  always  overlooks  the  most 
stupendous  facts — -such  as  the  conversion  of  an  empire — and 
the  commonest  experiences — such  as  the  birth  of  a  brace  of 
conflicting  twins  from  the  womb  of  the  Rachel  of  revolu- 
tion, when  history  happens  to  predict  the  failure  of  the 
self-elected  conquering  savior.  Man  learns  to  believe  what- 
ever he  fondly  desires,  to  expect  what  he  believes,  and  to 
predict  what  he  expects.  His  predictions  are  the  mirrors 
which  photograph  his  own  moods  of  mind,  rather  than  views 
through  a  telescope  directed  to  the  distant  cloud  capped 
mountains  of  futurity. 

But  it  is  confidently  asserted  that  the  science  of  party 
politics  is  simply  the  exercise  of  the  gift  of  prophetic  vis- 
ion on  the  theater  of  civil  life;  and  that  a  sagacious  poli- 
tician is,  within  his  own  sphere,  a  prophet.  He  applies  the 
conditions  of  the  past,  so  far  as  he  knows  them,  to  the  cal- 
culation of  the  future.  His  success  proves  his  sagacity,  not 
liis  supernatural  inspiration.  Why  should  religious  predic- 
tions be  attributed  to  a  different  power? 

For  the  very  simple  and  satisfactory  reason,  that  the 
great  majority  of  the  calculations  of  party  politicians  are 

(210) 


PROPHECY.  211 

failures,  while  the  predictions  of  the  Bible  are  verified  by 
the  event.  Name  a  dozen  leaders  of  American  politics 
during  the  last  half  century,  and  you  name  half  a  score  of 
disappointed  presidential  candidates,  whose  unfinished  mon- 
uments prevent  the  kindly  green  sward  of  oblivion  from 
vailing  their  disappointments,  and  check  the  prayer  of  the 
passing  pilgrim  that  they  may  rest  in  peace;  while  of  the 
last  half  dozen  who  have  occupied  the  presidential  chair, 
and  guided  the  destinies  of  the  most  progressive  half  of  the 
world,  not  a  single  man  had  been  suggested  by  the  political 
leaders  even  ten  years  before  his  election.  No  wonder  poli- 
ticians become  shy  of  prediction. 

But  it  is  alleged,  that  while  on  a  field  so  contracted  as  to 
become  the  arena  of  mere  personal  partialities  it  is  confes- 
sedly difl&cult  to  predict  the  future,  on  the  wider  field  of 
the  world's  great  interests,  the  well-known  uniformity  of 
human  passions  and  interests  render  their  results  calculable 
to  the  sagacious  statesman. 

Thus  Draper  argues,  that  nations,  like  the  individuals 
composing  them,  have  fixed  periods  of  growth,  manhood, 
decay,  decrepitude,  and  death — more  or  less  rapid,  accord- 
ing to  the  stock  and  situation.  Those  who  accept  that 
dogma  argue  that  all  that  is  necessary  in  order  to  predict 
the  fate  of  a  nation  is  a  correct  calculation  of  its  present 
age ;  whether  of  childhood,  manhood,  or  senility. 

It  is  wonderful  how  rashly  men  will  risk  their  reputation 
for  common  sense  on  the  sound  of  a  plausible  analogy, 
which,  even  were  it  valid,  would  not  justify  the  inference 
drawn  from  it.  For,  suppose  that  there  were  as  fixed  laws 
of  national  as  of  individual  life,  can  any  man  predict  the 
period  of  the  life  of  any  individual,  much  less  his  destiny? 
May  not  the  life  of  the  nation  be  as  liable  to  accidents  and 
diseases  as  that  of  the  individual  ? 

But  the  claim  has  been  actually  made,  tliat  the  skillful 
statesman,  or  philosophic  observer,  is  able  to  foresee,  and 


212  PROPHECY. 

foretell,  even  sucli  accidents.  Dean  Stanley  quotes  Mill  as 
suggesting  an  ordinary  sign  of  statesmanship  in  modern 
times :  "  To  have  made  predictions  often  verified  by  the 
event,  seldom  or  never  falsified  by  it." 

Others  give  a  still  wider  range  to  prophetic  inspiration. 
They  tell  us  that  all  genius  is  prophetic,  inasmuch  as  it 
grasps  general  laws,  universal  in  their  range,  and  unvariable 
in  their  operation,  the  application  of  which  to  particular 
events  constitutes  prediction.  The  Hebrew  prophets  were 
sagacious  observers  of  human  nature,  and  made  very  shrewd 
calculations  of  the  future  progress  of  events  by  a  careful 
induction  of  the  invariable  laws  of  nature  from  the  history 
of  the  past.  But  there  was  nothing  supernatural  in  that. 
Every  poet,  philosopher,  and  statesman  is  more  or  less  of  a 
prophet.  Indeed  foresight,  like  insight,  is  common  to  all 
men :  a  superior  degree  of  this  common  possession  consti- 
tutes the  prophet.  Men  of  profound  insight,  or  of  exten- 
sive foresight,  are  equally  rare  in  all  departments  of  science. 
Ignorance  ascribes  to  supernatural  inspiration  the  sagacity 
derived  from  extensive  observation  of  nature  and  history ; 
while  philosophy  traces  to  the  same  source  the  inspiration  of 
Moses  and  Mohammed,  of  Isaiah  and  Apollo,  of  the  Principia, 
Paradise  Lost,  and  the  Apocalypse,  of  Kothschild,  Napo- 
leon, and  Bismarck.  Some  geniuses  expend  themselves  in 
poems,  some  in  paintings,  others  in  predictions.  All  are 
alike  imperfect  and  fallible.  Once  in  centuries,  perhaps, 
we  are  astonished  by  the  advent  of  a  master,  while  occa- 
sional less  perfect  attempts  and  shrewd  guesses  keep  the 
fires  of  ambition  alive  in  the  human  breast. 

But  if  this  were  a  correct  account  of  the  case  we  should 
have  our  best  prophets  as  the  result  of  our  widest  observa- 
tions of  nature  and  history;  the  best  should  come  last. 
The  prophets  of  this  nineteenth  century  should  be  far  ahead 
of  Moses  in  prophetic  foresight,  standing  as  they  do  on  the 
summit  of  the  observatory  built  by  the  experience  of  forty 


pROPnECT.  213 

centuries.  Whereas,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  world  knows 
nothing  about  these  modern  prophets,  or  their  predictions. 
The  instances  alleged  by  Rationalists  are  contemptibly  triv- 
ial when  compared  with  the  Bible  predictions.  Contrast, 
for  instance,  Cayotte's  alleged  prediction,  that  the  fate  of 
Charles  would  befall  Louis  XVI.,  and  that  the  rabble 
would  fill  Paris  with  anarchy — with  Daniel's  grand  historic 
outline  of  the  four  great  empires ;  or  with  our  Savior's  de- 
tailed prediction  of  the  siege  of  Jerusalem.  Cayotte's  guess 
commanded  no  respect,  even  while  the  coming  event  cast  its 
shadow  before  it ;  nor  did  he  profess  to  utter  it  in  the  name 
of  the  Great  Disposer  of  all  events  as  the  seal  and  authen- 
tication of  a  revelation  of  moral  duty  to  man ;  and  so  it 
was  of  no  value  to  those  threatened  by  the  calamity.  But 
our  Lord's  predictions  were  so  authoritative  in  their  tone, 
and  so  definite  in  their  details,  that  they  enabled  his  dis- 
ciples to  escape  the  impending  destruction  at  that  time ;  and 
their  fulfillment  has  furnished  a  decisive  proof  of  his  divine 
foresight  to  all  generations. 

We  are  told  by  men  who  could  not  read  one  of  Apollo's 
oracles  to  save  their  lives,  nor  recite  one  of  Isaiah's  prophe- 
cies to  save  their  souls,  that  Apollo's  oracles,  no  less  than 
Isaiah's,  were  inspired.  Could  such  persons  be  prevailed 
upon  to  read  carefully  any  single  prophetic  book  of  Scrip- 
ture, with  the  historic  facts  to  which  it  refers,  or  even  the 
briefest  abridgment  of  these  facts,  such  as  that  contained  in 
The  Comprehensive  Commentary,  they  would  not  thus  ex- 
pose their  ignorance  alike  of  heathen  and  Christian  oracles. 

The  difi'erences  between  them  are  too  numerous  to  be 
easily  enumerated.  The  oracles  of  the  heathen  are  always 
sources  of  gain  to  their  prophets.  The  ancient  Pythoness 
must  have  a  hecatomb,  the  writing  medium  a  dollar,  and 
the  modern  Pythoness  of  the  platform  a  dime.  But  under 
the  inspiration  of  God  even  a  Balaam  becomes  honest,  and 


214  PROPHECY. 

the  leprosy  of  Naaman  marks  the  sordid  Gehazi  and  his  seed 
forever. 

The  oracles  of  the  heathen  are  always  immoral  in  their 
tendency.  From  the  first  spiritual  communication  through 
the  serpent  medium  in  the  tree  of  knowledge,  down  to  the 
last  spiritual  marriage  rapped  out  by  the  oracle,  they  are  all 
in  favor  of  pride,  ambition,  lying,  lust,  and  murder.  The 
oracles  of  God  begin  with  a  prohibition  of  curiosity,  pride, 
covetousness,  and  theft :  "In  the  day  thou  eatest  thereof 
thou  shalt  surely  die."  And  they  are  uniformly  of  the 
same  tenor,  forbidding,  reproving,  threatening  vice,  and  en- 
couraging virtue,  down  to  the  last :  "  Blessed  are  they  that 
do  his  commandments,  that  they  may  have  right  to  the  tree 
of  life,  and  may  enter  in  through  the  gates  into  the  city ; 
for  without  are  dogs,  and  sorcerers,  and  whoremongers,  and 
murderers,  and  idolaters,  and  whosoever  loveth  and  maketh 
a  lie." 

This  last  mark — falsehood — ^belongs  to  all  heathen  oracles, 
from  the  first  utterance  by  the  serpent,  down  to  the  last  re- 
sponse rapped  out  by  the  medium.  Take  any  one  heathen 
oracle  of  which  we  have  any  definite  account — and  the 
number  is  very  small — and  you  will  find  that,  if  it  is  not  "as 
equivocal  as  Apollo,"  it  is  false. 

For  instance,  Dean  Stanley  very  confidently  refers  to  cer- 
tain heathen  oracles,  "  the  fulfillment  of  which,  according 
to  Cicero,  could  not  be  denied  without  a  perversion  of  all 
history.  Such  was  the  foreshadowing  of  the  twelve  cen- 
turies of  Roman  dominion,  by  the  legend  of  the  apparition 
of  the  twelve  vultures  to  Romulus,  which  was  so  understood 
400  years  before  its  accomplishment."  Comparing  the  pro- 
phetic predictions  with  such  fables,  he  says  :  "/if  is  not  that 
they  are  more  exact  in  particulars  of  time  and  place;  none 
can  be  more  so  than  that  of  the  twelve  centuries  of  the 
Roman  Empire."* 

*  Jewish  Church,  403,  4.  The  Bible,  80. 


PROPHECY.  215 

The  oracle  thus  exalted  to  a  level  with  the  predictions  of 
our  Lord  and  his  apostles  is  quoted  by  Ccnsorinus,*  A.  D. 
238,  from  Varro,  who  died  B.  C.  28.  Varro  stated  that 
he  had  heard  Vettius,  no  common  augur,  of  great  genius  in 
disputing,  a  match  with  any  of  the  most  learned,  say,  "  If 
it  was  so,  as  the  historians  related,  as  to  the  auguries  of  the 
founding  of  the  city  of  Romulus  and  the  twelve  vultures, 
since  the  Roman  people  had  passed  120  years  safe,  it  would 
reach  1,200." 

Dean  Stanley  misquotes  the  oracle,  and  does  injustice  to 
the  old  heathen  prophet.  He  spake  no  word  whatever 
about  dominion;  all  he  dared  conjecture  for  his  city  was 
safety.  Even  that  is  put  in  a  highly  hypothetical  mood. 
The  augury  begins  with  an  "if,"  regarding  the  apocryphal 
story  of  Romulus  and  the  twelve  vultures.  But  whether 
the  fable  of  the  vultures  be  true  or  not,  the  augury  of  twelve 
centuries  of  safety  deduced  from  it  is  undeniably  false, 
whether  it  refers  to  the  material  city,  or  to  the  political 
constitution  then  established.  The  city  then  built  was 
burnt  by  Brennus,  the  Gaul.  Its  successor  was  taken  and 
plundered  by  Alaric,  in  A.  D.  410;  again  by  Genseric,  and 
the  Vandals,  in  455 ;  and  again  by  the  Ostrogoths,  in  546. 
Thus  the  material  city  was  repeatedly  taken  and  destroyed 
during  the  twelve  centuries  succeeding  its  founding.  If  the 
augury  referred  to  the  duration  of  the  political  constitution 
then  instituted,  every  school-boy  knows  that  half  a  dozen 
revolutions  falsified  the  prediction.  If,  however,  it  bo  al- 
leged that  it  referred  to  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  city  of 
Rome,  that  it  should  cease  to  exist  after  twelve  centuries,  it 
is  self-evidently  false;  for  now,  after  the  lapse  of  twenty- 
six  centuries,  Rome  is  larger,  its  people  more  numerous,  and 
its  territory  wider  than  it  was  for  centuries  after  Romulus 
saw  the  twelve  vultures.    Thus  God  "frustrateth  the  tokens 


*  De  Die  Natali,  c.  17,  cited  in  Pusey  on  Daniel,  642. 


216  PROPHECY. 

of  the  liars."  Yet  men  who  have  read  Roman  history,  and 
whose  business  it  is  to  read  their  Bibles,  continue  to  cite 
Vettius  Yaleus  as  a  prophet,  and  to  compare  his  false  au- 
guries with  the  predictions  of  the  Scriptures  of  truth ! 

This  is  only  one  of  a  number  of  such  secular  predictions 
confidently  cited  by  the  learned  Dean  as  having  been  as 
minute  and  specific  as  those  of  Scripture,  and  undeniably 
fulfilled.  But  a  scholar  of  his  own  church  has  examined 
his  references  and  alleged  facts,  and  the  result  is,  that  not  a 
single  instance  remains  of  the  fulfillment  of  any  definite 
prediction  given  by  the  original  writers;  and  where  the 
transcriber  and  the  Dean  have  helped  them  out  to  a  more 
definite  prediction,  it  has  proved  a  false  prophecy,  as  in  the 
case  of  Sterling's  and  Spence's  prediction  of  the  year  of  the 
disruption  of  the  Union  of  the  United  States.  Dr.  Pusey 
summarizes  this  discussion  in  his  work  on  Daniel  (p.  637), 
from  which  we  extract  and  condense  the  following  para- 
graphs on  this  subject : 

"  Dean  Stanley  produces  a  certain  number  of  alleged  pre- 
dictions in  secular  history,  as  counterparts  of  the  predic- 
tions of  the  political  events  of  their  own,  and  the  surround- 
ing nations,"  in  the  Hebrew  prophets,  i.  e.  (in  religious 
language),  "of  God's  judgments  upon  both  for  their  sins 
against  himself  and  their  fellow-men."  He  says,  "Every 
one  knows  instances,  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times,  of 
predictions  which  have  been  uttered,  and  fulfilled,  in  regard 
to  events  of  this  kind.  Sometimes  such  predictions  have 
been  the  results  of  political  foresight.  Many  instances  will 
occur  to  students  of  history.  Even  within  our  own  memory 
the  great  catastrophe  of  the  disruption  of  the  United  States 
of  America  was  foretold,  even  with  the  exact  date,  several 
years  beforehand.  Sometimes  there  has  been  an  anticipa- 
tion of  some  future  epoch  in  the  pregnant  sayings  of  emi- 
nent philosophers  and  poets ;  as  for  example  the  intimation 
of  the  discovery  of  America  by  Seneca;  or  of  Shakespeare 


PROPHECY.  217 

by  Plato;  or  the  Reformation  by  Dante.  Sometimes  the 
result  has  been  produced  by  the  power  of  divination,  granted 
in  some  inexplicable  manner  to  ordinary  men.  Of  such  a 
kind  were  many  of  the  ancient  oracles,  the  fulfillment  of 
which,  according  to  Cicero,  could  not  be  denied  without  a 
perversion  of  history.  Such  was  the  foreshadowing  of  the 
twelve  centuries  of  Roman  dominion  by  the  legend  of  the 
apparition  of  the  twelve  vultures  to  Romulus,  which  was  so 
understood  400  years  before  its  actual  accomplishment. 
Such,  but  with  less  certainty,  was  the  traditional  prediction 
of  the  conquest  of  Constantinople  by  the  Mussulmans;  the 
alleged  predictions  by  Archbishop  Malachi,  whether  com- 
posed in  the  eleventh  or  sixteenth  centuries,  of  the  series 
of  popes  down  to  the  present  time;  not  to  speak  of  the 
well-known  instances  which  are  recorded  both  in  French 
and  English  history.  But  there  are  several  points  which  at 
once  place  the  prophetic  predictions  on  a  different  level 
from  any  of  these.  It  is  not  that  they  are  more  exact  in 
particulars  of  time  and  'place;  none  can  be  more  so  than 
that  of  the  twelve  centuries  of  the  Roman  Empire;  and 
our  Lord  himself  has  excluded  the  precise  knowledge  of 
times  and  seasons  from  the  widest  and  highest  range  of  pro- 
phetic vision."  (Jewish  Church,  463.  The  Bible:  its  Form 
and  Substance,  pages  80,  82.) 

''It  might  safely  bo  admitted,"  says  Dr.  Pusey,  "that  the 
outward  predictions  of  time  and  place  are  of  the  body, 
rather  than  of  the  soul  of  prophecy,  yet  as  indications  that 
he  revealed  himself,  who  alone  could  know  long  before  what 
he  willed  to  bring  to  pass  by  his  Providence,  the  predictions 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets  are  not  to  be  paralleled  by  any  hu- 
man history. 

"  Definite  predictions  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  have  been 
instanced  above.  Dr.  Stanley's  instances  of  secular  fulfill- 
ment are  unhappy."  He  then  proceeds  to  examine  in  their 
turn  the  political,  poetic,  Popish,  Mohammedan,  and  heathen 
oracles  quoted  by  Dean  Stanley. 


218  PROPHECY. 

/.    The  Political  Predictions. 

Sterling,  as  quoted  by  Mr,  Spence,  so  far  from  predict- 
ing the  great  catastrophe  of  the  disruption  of  the  United 
States  at  the  end  of  the  four  years,  says  that  no  wise  man 
would  predict  anything  even  within  those  four  years.  "  It 
appears  to  me  that  amid  so  many  elements  of  uncertainty 
as  to  the  future,  both  from  the  excited  state  of  men's  minds 
in  the  S::ates  themselves,  and  the  complication  of  surround- 
ing circimstances,  no  wise  man  would  venture  to  foretell 
the  probable  issue  of  American  affairs  during  the  next  four 
years."  (On  the  American  Union,  page  14.)  And  this 
was  written  amid  all  the  heavings  which  preceded  the  burst- 
ing of  the  volcano.  It  followed,  after  statesmen  had,  one 
after  another,  seen  the  elements  of  that  disruption.  The 
probability  of  the  severance  of  the  North  and  South  has 
been  a  speculation  to  which  the  older  of  us  have  long  been 
familiar.  And  now  [1864]  who  would  venture  to  predict 
the  time  of  the  close  of  that  sad  war?  (First  edition.) 
Now  [1865]  that  it  has  come  to  an  end  Americans  taunt 
Europeans  with  their  want  of  foresight  in  their  anticipa- 
tions as  to  its  issue  The  Times  correspondent  retorts  as 
to  false  anticipations  of  Americans — (1)  that  the  issue  would 
not  interfere  with  slavery ;  (2)  that  there  would  be  separa- 
tion without  bloodshed;  (3)  that  the  war  would  last  only 
some  ninety  days;  (4)  that  the  United  States  would  break 
up  into  fragments  (Northern) ;  (5)  they  contemplated  that 
the  interests  of  trade  would  suflBce  for  the  harmony  of 
North  and  South  when  separated,  etc.,  etc.  June  6,  1865. 
Europeans  almost  universally  anticipated  the  success  of  the 
South.  So  little  did  the  human  sagacity  of  men  really  sa- 
gacious, with  intimate  knowledge  of  the  strength  of  the 
different  parties,  their  numbers,  resources,  and  all  the  cal- 
culations as  to  modern  warfare,  enable  them  to  anticipate 
within  lialf  a  year  the  result  of  a  war,  which,  througli  the 
vivid  description  of  it,  and  clear  knowledge,  was  carried  on 


PROPHECY.  219 

almost  under  their  eyes.  And  these  men  would  have  us  to 
suppose  that  Hebrew  prophets,  living  in  the  center  of  a 
small  people,  could,  with  mere  human  knowledge,  foretell 
with  absolute  certainty  the  overthrow  of  flourishing  em- 
pires, when  at  the  acme  of  their  power ! 

//.   The   So-called  Prophecies  of  S.  Malachi.  ' 

These  have  long  been  recognized  to  be  a  forgery,  unmean- 
ing except  for  the  immediate  purpose  for  which  they  were 
"forged  by  the  partisans  of  the  Cardinal  Simoncelli,  one  of 
the  candidates  for  the  tiara,  who  was  designated  by  the 
words  'de  antiquitate  orbis,'  because  he  was  of  Orvieto, 
in  Latin,  'orbs  vetus.'  "(Biog.  Unv'l  v.  Wion.)  Menestrier 
published  a  refutation  of  the  pretended  prophecies  of  S. 
Malachi,  Paris,  1689,  written  with  much  solidity.  Don 
Feijoo  also  refuted  these  pretended  prophecies  in  his  Teatro 
Crltico.  The  Noveau  Dictionnaire  Historique,  by  MM. 
Chaudon  and  Delaudine,  speaks  of  the  *•  errors  and  ana- 
chronisms with  which  this  impertinent  list  swarms."  "The 
forgetfulness  of  common  sense  makes  itself  felt  in  a  few 
pages.  Those  who  have  set  themselves  to  explain  these 
too  noted  insipidities,  always  find  some  allusion,  forced  or 
probable,  in  the  country,  name,  arms,  birth,  talents  of  the 
popes,  the  cardinalatory  dignities  they  had  borne,  etc. ;  e.  g.^ 
the  prophecy  which  related  to  Urban  the  Eighth  was, 
Lilium  et  Rosce^  It  was  fulfilled  to  the  very  letter,  say 
these  absurd  interpreters,  for  that  pope  had  in  his  coat  of 
arms  bees,  which  suck  lilies  and  roses.  (Art.  Malachi  and 
Wion.) 

III.  Dr.  Pusey  proceeds  to  examine  the  process  by 
which  a  prediction  of  the  conquest  of  Constantinople  has 
been  manufactured  for  the  false  prophet,  Mohammed. 

"In  the  mosque  of  Sultan  Mohammed  the  Second," 
says  V.  Hammer,  "  which  was  finished  A.  D.  14G9,  there 
stands,  to  the  right  of  the  main  door,  on  a  marble  slab,  on 


220  PROPHECY. 

an  azure  field,  in  gold  raised  characters,  the  tradition  of  the 
prophet  relating  to  Constantinople.  'They  will  conquer 
Constantinople;  and  blessed  the  prince,  blessed  the  army 
which  shall  fulfill  this.'  "  (Constant  v.  d.  Bosporos  I.  393.) 
Or  (as  he  renders  more  exactly  in  Gesch  d  Osm.  Reich,  p. 
523),  "the  best  prince  is  he  who  conquers  it,  arid  the  best 
army,  his  army."  This  tradition,  being  above  eight  centu- 
ries after  Mohammed,  has,  of  course,  no  value.  It  reappears 
in  a  different  form  in  Ockley,  the  conquest  being  presup- 
posed, rather  than  prophesied.  Ockley  says  (History  of 
Saracens,  II.  128),  "  Mohammed  having  said, '  The  sins  of  the 
first  army  which  takes  the  city  of  the  Cae.^ar  are  forgiven.' " 
Ockley  referring  only  vaguely  to  Bakhari,  who,  early  in  the 
third  century,  after  Mohammed  selected  7,000  traditions 
which  he  held  to  be  genuine,  out  of  some  267,000,  I  ap- 
plied to  my  friend,  M.  Reinaud,  professor  of  Arabic  at 
Paris,  and  member  of  the  Institute,  not  doubting  that  with 
his  large  knowledge  he  would  be  able  to  point  out  to  me  the 
passage  in  the  Sahih.  This,  with  his  well-known  kindness, 
he  has  done,  amid  his  many  labors.  It  puts  an  end  to  all 
questions  about  prophecy.  The  passage  is  this:  As  0mm 
Heram  has  related  to  us  that  she  heard  the  prophet  say, 
"The  first  army  of  my  people  which  shall  war  by  sea  will 
acquire  merits  with  God,  0mm  Heram  said,  'I  said,  0 
Apostle  of  God,  I  will  be  among  them.'  He  said,  'Thou 
shalt  be  among  them.'  Then  the  prophet  said,  'The  first 
army  of  my  people  which  shall  attack  the  city  of  the  Cae- 
sar, their  sins  shall  be  forgiven  them.'  Then  I  said,  'I  will 
be  with  them,  0  Apostle  of  God.'  He  said,  'No!'"  M. 
Reinaud  adds,  "  There  is  no  question  but  that  Mohammed 
conceived  the  idea  of  the  invasion  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
and  of  the  kingdom  of  Persia  by  his  disciples.  He  himself 
shortly  before  his  death  tried  his  strength  against  the  Roman 
forces  in  Syria.     But  the  passage  does  not  say  what  Ockley 


PROPHECY.  221 

makes  him  say.  It  does  not  say  that  Constantinople  would 
be  taken." 

The  other  prophecy  referred  to  by  Yon  Hammer  is  as 
follows :  "  Have  you  heard  of  a  city  of  which  one  side  is 
land,  the  two  others  sea?  They  said,  'Yea,  0  Apostle  of 
God.'  He  said,  'The  last  hour  will  not  come  without  its 
being  conqueroJ  by  70,000  sons  of  Isaac.  When  they  come 
to  it  they  will  not  fight  against  it  with  weapons  and  engines 
of  war,  but  with  the  word,  There  is  no  god  but  God,  and 
God  is  great ! '  Then  will  one  side  of  the  sea  walls  fall ; 
and  at  the  second  time  the  second;  and  at  the  third  time 
the  wall  on  thejand  side ;  and  they  will  enter  in  with  glad- 
ness." 

The  framer  of  this  prophecy  expected  the  walls  of  Con- 
stantinople to  fall  like  those  of  Jericho,  which  he  must 
have  had  in  mind.  He  expected  it  to  fall  before  Arabs, 
"sons  of  Isaac,"  not  before  Turks.  *  ^  Yet,  contrary 
to  the  expectation,  and  the  prophecy,  it  did  fall  before  the 
Turks,  after  having  been  seven  times  besieged  by  the 
Arabs,  and  four  times  by  the  Turks ;  by  whom  it  was  taken 
A.  D.  1453.  The  framer  of  the  prediction  anticipated  that 
the  representatives  of  the  followers  of  the  prophet  would 
be  Arabs  to  some  indefinite  period,  near  the  last  hour ;  he 
expected  a  miraculous  destruction  of  Constantinople ;  it  was 
besieged  seven  times  by  those  before  whose  war-cry  he  ex- 
pected it  to  fall.  It  did  not  fall  before  those  before  whom 
he  said  it  would  fall ;  it  fell  in  an  ordinary  way,  not  in  that 
predicted ;  it  was  besieged  in  the  way  in  which  he  said  it 
would  not  be  besieged ;  lastly,  it  fell,  but  its  walls  fell  not. 
Evrry  detail  of  the  prediction  is  contrary  to  the  fact.  As 
for  the  mere  capture,  it  befalls  all  great  cities  in  turn ;  so 
that  a  prediction  of  the  capture  of  any  great  city  would  be 
the  safest  of  all  prophecies.  But  the  prediction  did  not  an- 
ticipate, what  is  now  certain,  that  as  soon  as  Christian  jeal- 


222  PROPHECY. 

ousies  permit,  before  the  end  of  the  world,  it  will  be  wrested 
from  its  captors. 

IV.  The  legend  of  Romulus  and  the  vultures,  and  the 
falsehood  of  the  prediction  based  upon  it,  have  been  exposed 
on  a  previous  page. 

V.  In  regard  to  Seneca's  alleged  prediction  of  the  dis- 
covery of  America,  it  was  exceedingly  vague;  and  was 
wholly  based  on  the  undoubted  knowledge  of  its  existence 
by  the  ancient  Egyptians,  and  by  Plato,  Proclus,  Marcellus, 
Ammianus,  Marcellinus,  Diodorus,  Aristotle,  and  Plutarch; 
whose  assertions  influenced  Columbus  to  undertake  the 
search  for  it.  Nothing  could  be  more  certain  than  that 
such  a  continent  would  be  rediscovered.  But  in  the  only 
indication  which  Seneca  gives  us  of  its  location  he  erred; 
for  Thule  is  still  the  utmost  land  northward,  no  new  con- 
tinent having  been  discovered,  nor  remaining  to  be  discov- 
ered, toward  the  North  Pole. 

VI.  As  to  the  heathen  oracles  we  have  already  spoken 
enough. 

VII.  "  The  anticipation  of  Shakespeare  by  Plato  amounts 
to  this,  that  he  makes  Socrates  compel  his  friends  to  admit, 
Hhat  it  belongs  to  the  same  man,  how  to  compose  comedy 
and  tragedy,  and  that  he  who  is  by  skill  a  composer  of  trage- 
dies is  also  a  composer  of  comedies.'  (Sympos  fin.)  *  * 
But  it  is  mere  confusion  to  speak  of  this  as  anticipation. 
Plato  does  not  say  that  there  would  be  any  greater  combina- 
tion of  the  two  talents  than  there  had  been ;  he  does  not 
even  say  that  the  highest  excellence  in  one  involved  excel- 
lence in  the  other ;  he  simply  says  that  the  two  faculties 
belonged  to  the  same  mind.  According  to  his  maxims,  if 
true,  it  would  be  rather  marvelous  that  they  were  not  more 
frequently  combined  than  that  they  were  remarkably  in  one 
mind." 

VIII.  "  Those  best  read  in  Dante  are  at  a  loss  to  find  in 
him  any  trace  of  a  prediction  of  the  Reformation.     Dante, 


PROPHECY.  223 

with  his  firm  faith  in  all  Roman  doctrine,  could  not  have 
imagined  or  anticipated  such  a  disruption  as  Luther's.  Dean 
Stanley  corrects  an  unimportant  misprint  or  two  in  the  sec- 
ond edition  of  his  book,  on  the  ground  of  the  above  state- 
ments. He  does  not  even  attempt  to  supply  a  passage  from 
Dante.     I  have  looked  for  one  in  vain." 

Yet  such  a  collection  of  errors,  absurdities,  falsehoods, 
and  impostures  is  gravely  presented,  in  this  nineteonth  cen- 
tury, by  a  learned  clergyman,  as  comparable  in  regard  to  ex- 
act fulfillment  with  the  oracles  of  God. 

It  is  not  intended  here  to  discuss  the  question  of  the 
continuance  of  prophetic  powers  in  the  Church.  If,  as 
many  believe,  the  promise  in  Joel  ii.  28 — "  It  shall  come  to 
pass  in  the  last  days,  saith  God,  that  your  sons  and  your 
daughters  shall  prophesy,"  etc.— is  a  promise  not  yet  ex- 
hausted, predictions  given  by  the  Holy  Spirit  may  have  been 
given  through  Christians  in  former  times,  and  may  still  be 
given.  But  if  such  be  the  fact,  these  are  not  secular  pre- 
dictions; but  spiritual  and  supernatural,  and  of  the  same 
class  with  those  of  Scripture;  they  are  therefore  not  to  be 
cited  by  Rationalists  as  examples  of  secular  predication. 

But  it  is  objected  that  "the  prophecies  of  Scripture  are 
as  obscure  as  the  oracles ;  are  all  wrapped  up  in  symbolical 
language;  that  many  of  them  have  a  double  meaniig;  that 
no  two  interpreters  are  agreed  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  un- 
fulfilled predictions;  and  that  no  man  can  certainly  foretell 
any  future  event  by  means  of  them." 

The  objection  proceeds  on  a  total  mistake  of  the  nature 
and  design  of  prophecy,  which  is  not  to  unvail  the  future 
for  the  gratification  of  your  curiosity,  but  to  give  you  direc- 
tion in  your  present  duty;  precisely  the  reverse  of  the 
oracles  referred  to,  which  proposed  to  tell  their  votaries 
what  should  happen,  but  rarely  condescended  to  direct  them 
how  to  behave  themselves  so  that  things  might  happen  well. 
The  larger  part  of  the  prophecies  of  Scripture  is  taken  up 


224  PROPHECY. 

•with  directions  to  men  how  to  regulate  their  conduct,  rather 
than  with  information  how  God  means  to  regulate  his. 
There  is  just  as  much  of  the  latter  as  is  sufficient  to  show 
us  that  the  God  who  gave  the  Bible  governs  the  world,  and 
even  that  always  urges  the  same  moral  lesson :  "  Say  ye  to 
the  righteous  that  it  shall  be  well  with  him,  for  he  shall  eat 
the  fruit  of  his  doings."  "Woe  to  the  wicked;  it  shall  be 
ill  with  him,  for  the  reward  of  his  hands  shall  be  given  him." 
Whenever  a  vision  relates  to  what  God  will  do  in  the  dis- 
tant future,  it  is  dark  and  mysterious ;  but  whenever  any 
directions  are  given  necessary  for  our  immediate  duty,  then 
the  "vision  is  written  and  made  plain  on  tables,  that  he  may 
run  that  readeth  it."  The  possessors  of  a  clearly  engrossed 
title-deed  have  surely  no  reason  to  complain  that  the  presi- 
dent has  chosen  that  his  seal  appended  to  it  shall  consist  of 
a  device,  which,  by  reason  of  its  being  hard  to  read,  and 
harder  to  imitate,  secures  both  himself  and  them  against 
forgery.  The  double  meaning  of  some  prophecies  is  a 
double  check.  So  far  from  resembling  the  equivocations  of 
heathen  oracles,  by  taking  either  of  two  opposite  events  for 
a  fulfillment,  they  require  both  of  two  corresponding  ones ; 
and  some  prophecies,  like  a  master  key,  open  several  suc- 
cessive events,  and  thus  show  that  the  same  mind  planned 
both  locks  and  key.  When  the  pre  liction  is  fulfilled  all 
mystery  vanishes,  and  men  see  plainly  that  thus  it  was  writ- 
ten ;  that  is  to  say,  men  who  look ;  for  the  man  who  will  not 
open  his  eyes  will  never  see  anything  that  it  concerns  him 
to  know.  But  the  man  who  thinks  that  it  concerns  him  so 
much  to  know  what  God  will  do  with  the  world  a  hundred 
years  after  he  is  dead,  that  unless  the  propTiecies  of  the 
Bible  are  all  made  plain  to  him,  he  will  neither  read  God's 
word,  nor  obey  his  law,  may  go  on  his  own  way.  We  ex- 
pound no  mysteries  to  such  persons ;  for  it  is  written,  "  None 
of  the  wicked  shall  understand." 

As  to  the  objection  taken  from  the  symbolical  language  of 


PROPHECY.  225 

prophecy,  and  which  seems  to  a  number  of  our  modern 
critics  so  weighty  that  they  remove  to  the  purely  mythologic 
ground  everything  "  couched  in  symbolical  language,"  and 
account  nothing  to  be  prediction  unless  "  literal  history 
written  in  advance  " — I  would  merely  ask,  How  is  it  possi- 
ble to  reveal  heavenly  things  to  earth-born  men  but  by 
earthly  figures  ?  Do  you  know  a  single  word  in  your  own, 
or  any  other  language  to  express  a  spiritual  state,  or  mental 
operation,  that  is  not  the  name  of  some  material  state,  or 
physical  operation,  used  symbolically?  Heart,  soul,  spirit, 
idea,  memory,  imagination,  inclination,  etc.,  every  one  of 
them  a  figure  of  speech — a  symbol.  Nay,  is  there  a  letter 
in  your  own,  or  in  any  other  alphabet,  that  was  not  originally 
a  picture  of  something?  I  demand  to  know  in  what  way 
God  or  man  could  teach  you  to  know  anything  you  have 
never  seen,  but  by  either  showing  you  a  picture  of  it,  or 
telling  you  what  it  is  like  ?  That  is  simply  by  type  or  sym- 
bol ;  these  are  the  only  possible  media  of  conveying  heav- 
enly truth,  or  future  history  to  our  minds.  When,  there- 
fore, the  skeptic  insists  that  prophecy  be  given  literally,  in 
the  style  of  history  written  in  advance,  he  simply  requires 
that  God  would  make  it  utterly  unintelligible.  We  can 
gather  clear  and  definite  ideas  from  the  significant  hiero- 
glyphics of  symbolical  language,  but  the  literalities  of  his- 
tory written  in  advance  would  be  worse  to  decipher  than 
the  arrow-headed  inscriptions  of  Nineveh.  Just  imagine 
to  yourself  Alexander  the  Great  reading  Guizot,  instead  of 
Daniel ;  or  Hildreth,  as  being  less  mysterious  than  Ezekiel ; 
and  meeting,  for  instance,  such  a  record  as  this :  "  In  the 
year  of  Christ,  1847,  the  United  States  conquered  Mexico 
and  annexed  California,"  "In  the  year  of  Christ — what 
new  (31ympiad  may  be  that?  "  he  would  say.  "  The  United 
States  of  course  means  the  States  of  the  Achaen  League,  but 
on  what  shore  of  the  Euxine  may  Mexico  and  CaliTornia  be 
found?"  What  information  could  Aristotle  gather  from  the 
15 


226  PROPHECY. 

record  that,  "  In  1857,  the  Transatlantic  Telegraph  was  in 
operation?"  Could  all  the  augurs  in  the  seven-hilled  city 
have  expounded  to  Julius  Cassar  the  famous  dispatch,  if  in- 
tercepted in  prophetic  vision,  "  Sebastopol  was  evacuated  last 
night,  after  enduring  for  three  days  an  infernal  fire  of  shot 
and  shell?"  Nay,  to  diminish  the  vista  to  even  two  oi 
three  centuries,  what  could  Oliver  Cromwell,  aided  by  the 
whole  Westminster  Assembly,  have  made  of  a  prophetic 
vision  of  a  single  newspaper  paragraph  of  history  written 
in  advance,  to  inform  them  that,  "  Three  companies  of 
dragoons  came  down  last  night  from  Berwick  to  South- 
ampton, by  a  special  train,  traveling  54J  miles  an  hour,  in- 
cluding stoppages,  and  embarked  immediately  on  arrival. 
The  fleet  put  to  sea  at  noon,  in  the  face  of  a  full  gale  from 
the  S.  W.  ?  "  Why,  the  intelligible  part  of  this  single  para- 
graph would  seem  to  them  more  impossible,  and  the  unintel- 
ligible part  more  absurd,  than  all  the  mysterious  symbols  of 
the  Apocalypse. 

The  world  has  accepted  God's  symbols  thousands  of  years 
ago,  and  it  is  too  late  in  the  day  for  our  reformers  to  propose 
new  laws  of  thought,  and  forms  of  speech,  to  the  human 
race.  David's  prophetic  lyrics,  Christ's  graphic  parables, 
Isaiah's  celestial  anthems,  Ezekiel's  glorious  symbols,  and 
Solomon's  terse  proverbs,  will  be  recited  and  admired,  ages 
after  the  foggy  abstractions  of  mystified  metaphysicians 
have  vanished  from  the  earth.  The  Thirst  of  Passion,  the 
Cup  of  Pleasure,  the  Fountain  of  the  Water  of  Life,  the 
Blood  of  Murder,  the  Rod  of  Chastisement,  the  Iron  Scep- 
ter, the  Fire  of  Wrath,  the  Balance  of  Righteousness,  the 
Sword  of  Justice,  the  Wheels  of  Providence,  the  Conserva- 
tive Mountains,  the  Raging  Seas  of  Anarchy,  and  the  Gol- 
den, Brazen,  and  Iron  Ages,  will  reflect  their  images  in 
truth's  mirror,  and  })hotograph  their  lessons  on  memory's 
tablet,  while  the  mists  of  the  "  positive  philosophy,"  "  the 
absolute,"  and  "  the  conditioned,"  float  past  unheeded,  to 


PROPHECY.  227 

the  land  of  forgetfulness.  God's  prophetic  symbols  are  the 
glorious  embodiments  of  living  truths,  while  man's  philo- 
sophic abstractions  are  the  melancholy  ghosts  of  expiring 
nonsense. 

The  prophetic  symbols  are  sufficiently  plain  to  be  dis- 
tinctly intelligible  after  the  fulfillment,  as  we  shall  presently 
sec ;  sufficiently  obscure  to  baffle  presumptuous  curiosity 
before  it.  Had  they  been  so  written  as  to  be  fully  intelligi- 
ble beforehand,  they  must  have  interfered  with  tnan's  free 
agency,  by  causing  their  own  fulfillment.  They  hide  the  fu- 
ture sufficiently  to  make  man  feel  his  ignorance ;  they  re- 
veal enough  to  encourage  faith  in  the  God  who  rules  futurity. 

The  revelation  of  future  events,  however,  is  not  the  prin- 
cipal design  of  the  prophecies  of  the  Bible ;  they  bear  wit- 
ness to  God'^  powerful  present  influence  over  the  world  now. 
For  God's  prophecy  is  not  merely  his  foretelling  something 
which  will  certainly  happen  at  some  future  time,  but  over 
which  he  has  no  control — as  an  astronomer  foretells  an 
eclipse  of  the  sun,  but  can  neither  hasten  nor  hinder  it — 
but  it  is  his  revealing  of  a  part  of  his  plan  of  this  world's 
affairs,  to  show  that  God,  and  not  man,  is  the  sovereign  of 
this  world.  For  this  purpose  he  tells  beforehand  the  actions 
which  wicked  men,  of  their  own  free  will,  will  commit,  con- 
trary to  his  law,  and  the  measures  he  will  take  to  thwart 
their  designs,  and  fulfill  his  own.  Nay,  he  declares  he  will 
so  manage  matters  that,  without  their  knowledge,  and  even 
contrary  to  their  intentions,  heathen  armies,  and  infidel 
scoffers  shall  serve  his  purposes,  and  show  his  power ;  while 
yet  they  are  as  perfectly  voluntary  in  all  their  movements 
as  if  they,  and  not  God,  governed  the  world.  Every  ful- 
filled prophecy  thus  becomes  an  instance  and  evidence  of  a 
supernatural  government;  and  is,  to  a  thinking  mind,  a 
greater  miracle  than  casting  mountains  into  the  sea.  The 
style  of  prophecy  corresponds  to  this  design.     It  is  not  by 


228  PROPHECY. 

any  means  apologetic,   or  supplicating;   but,  on  the  con- 
trary, majestic,  convincing,  and  terrifying  to  the  ungodly. 

^'Remember  this  and  show  yourselves  men. 

^^ Bring  it  again  to  mind,  0  ye  transgressors. 

^^For  I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  else. 

^^I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  like  me. 

^''Declaring  the  end  from  the  beginning, 

^^And  from  ancient  times  the  things  that  are  not  yet  done, 

^^ Saying,  '  My  counsel  shall  stand,  and  I  will  do 

ALL  MY  PLEASURE.'  "* 

Infidels  feel  the  power  of  this  manifestation  of  God  in  his 
word ;  and  are  driven  to  every  possible  denial  of  the  fact, 
and  evasion  of  the  argument  drawn  from  it.  They  feel  in- 
stinctively that  Bible  prophecies  are  far  more  than  mere 
predictions.  They  would  rather  endow  every  human  being 
on  earth  with  the  power  of  predicting  the  future  than  al- 
low the  God  of  heaven  that  power  of  ruling  the  present 
which  these  prophecies  assert.  Hence  the  attempt  to  ad- 
mit their  predictive  truth,  and  yet  deny  their  divine  author- 
ity, by  ascribing  them  to  human  sagacity. 

Transatlantic  steam  navigation  has  produced  a  remarka- 
ble change  in  the  tone  of  Infidel  writers  and  speakers  in  re- 
gard to  the  prophecies  of  the  Bible.  You  could  not  con- 
verse long  with  an  Infidel  on  this  subject,  a  few  years  ago, 
until  he  would  assure  you,  with  all  confidence,  that  the 
prophecies  were  all  written  after  their  fulfillment,  and  so 
were  not  prophecies  at  all.  But  now  that  travelers  of  all 
classes,  scoffers^  sailors,  and  doctors  in  divinity,  scientific 
expeditions,  and  correspondents  of  daily  papers,  have 
flooded  the  world  with  undeiliable  attestations  that  many  of 
them  are  receiving  their  fulfillment  at  this  day,  none  but 
the  most  grossly  ignorant  and  stupid  attempt  to  deny  that 
the  prophecies  of  the  Bible  were  written  thousands  of  years 


*  Isaiah,  chap.  xlvi.  8-11, 


PROPHECY.  229 

since,  and  that  many  of  them  have  since  been  accomplished ; 
and  that  so  many  have  been  fulfilled  that  their  accomplish- 
ment can  not  be  ascribed  to  chance.  But  the  force  of  the 
argument  for  the  divine  inspiration  of  the  prophets  is  met 
by  the  assertion,  that  there  is  nothing  supernatural  in  proph- 
ecy, and  that  it  is  only  one  form  of  the  inspiration  of  genius 
applying  the  general  laws  of  nature. 

Calculating  securely  on  that  profound  ignorance  of  the 
Bible  which  characterizes  their  followers,  modern  writers 
inform  them  that  "  none  of  the  prophets  ever  uttered  any 
distinct,  definite,  unambiguous  prediction  of  any  future 
event  which  has  since  taken  place,  which  a  man  without  a 
miracle  could  not  equally  well  predict."  It  is  alleged  that 
the  prophecies,  in  predicting  the  overthrow  of  the  nations 
of  antiquity,  predicted  nothing  beyond  the  ken  of  human 
sagacity,  enlightened  by  a  careful  study  of  the  experience 
of  the  past,  and  the  invariable  laws  of  nature ;  that  it  re- 
quires no  inspiration  to  foretell  the  decay  of  perishing 
things;  that  the  invariable  progress  of  all  things,  empires 
as  well  as  individuals,  is  first  upward,  through  a  period  of 
youthful  vigor  and  energy,  then  onward  through  a  period  of 
ripe  maturity,  and  then  downward,  through  a  gradual  decay, 
and  final  dissolution,  to  the  inevitable  grave.  The  world's 
history  is  but  a  history  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  nations. 

1.  Now,  if  this  be  true,  it  is  an  awful  truth  for  the  Infi- 
del, for  it  sioeeps  away  the  last  vestige  of  a  foundation  of  his 
hope  for  eternifij.  The  only  reason  any  unbeliever  in  Rev- 
elation could  ever  give,  or  that  modern  Rationalists  do  give, 
for  their  hope  of  a  happy  eternity,  is  the  analogy  of  nature 
— the  alleged  constant  progress  of  all  things  toward  perfec- 
tion in  this  world.  It  is  an  awkward  truth  that  individually 
we  must  die,  and  the  worms  crawl  over  us ;  but  then  the 
wretched  fate  of  the  individual  was  to  be  compensated  by 
the  glorious  progress  of  the  race  onward  and  ever  onward 
and  upward;  from  the  fungus  to  the  frog,  and  from  the 


230  PROPHECY. 

frog  to  the  monkey,  from  the  monkey  to  the  man,  from  the 
noble  savage  wild  in  woods,  to  the  pastoral  tribe,  thence  to 
the  empire  and  the  federal  republic,  and  finally  to  the  reign 
of  individual  and  passional  attraction,  and  union  with  the 
sum  of  all  the  intelligences  of  the  universe,  through  a  con- 
stant progress  toward  infinite  perfection. 

But,  alas !  it  seems  it  was  a  false  analogy,  an  ill-observed 
fact,  a  delusion;  the  course  of  nature  is  all  the  other  way. 
The  tendency  of  all  perishing  things  is  not  to  perl'ection, 
but  to  perdition;  and  it  needs  no  inspiration  to  tell  that 
man's  loftiest  towers,  and  strongest  cities,  and  proudest  em- 
pires will  come  to  ruin ;  or  that  the  most  polished,  power- 
ful, and  populous  nations  of  antiquity  will  dwindle  down 
into  Turks,  Moors,  and  Egyptians.  Here  is  a  fact  of  awful 
omen.  Death  reigns  in  this  world  of  ours;  death  moral, 
social,  political,  and  physical,  has  ever  trampled  upon  man, 
proud  man,  learned  man,  civilized  man,  over  all  the  plans 
of  man,  over  every  man,  and  over  every  association  of  men, 
even  the  largest,  the  widest,  the  mightiest.  And  now  the 
Infidel,  having  taken  away  our  hope  of  help  from  heaven, 
comes  with  the  serpent's  hiss,  and  fiendish  sneer,  to  taunt 
the  perishing  world  with  this  miserable  truism — that  the 
tendency  of  everything  on  earth  is  to  perdition,  and  that  it 
needs  no  inspiration  to  tell  it.  Truly  it  does  not.  Were 
that  all  the  prophets  of  God  had  to  tell  us — as  it  is  all  the 
prophets  of  Infidelity  can  prophecy — we  had  as  little  need 
for  the  one  as  for  the  other.  Earthquake  and  hurri'?anej 
volcano  and  valley  flood,  autumn  frosts  and  winter  blasts, 
fever,  consumption,  war,  and  pestilence,  the  grave-yard  and 
the  charnel-house,  the  Parthenon  and  the  Pyramids,  the 
silent  cities  of  Colorado,  and  the  buried  palaces  of  Assyria, 
unite  to  attest  this  awful  doom. 

But  what  reason  has  the  skeptic  to  believe  that  this  in- 
variable law  of  nature  shall  ever  be  repealed,  and  this  inev- 
itable progress  of  all  things  to  perdition  be  arrested?   Why 


PROPHECY.  231 

may  not  men  be  as  selfish,  and  filthy,  and  grasping,  and" 
murderous  in  the  other  world,  as  they  are  in  this?  Why 
may  not  the  course  of  nature  be  as  fatal  to  the  sinner's 
prosperity  there  as  it  is  here  ?  Why  may  not  the  progress 
of  the  proud  empires  and  spheres  of  futurity  be  such  as 
the  skeptic  declares  the  progress  of  the  past  to  have  been,' 
so  invariably  toward  dissolution  and  death,  that  it  shall  need 
no  inspiration  to  predict  its  course  downward,  downward,  ever 
downward,  to  endless  perdition?  Stand  forward,  skeptic, 
and  point  the  world  to  an  instance  in  which  an  ungodly 
nation  has  stemmed  this  all-destroying  totrent  of  ruin;  or 
arknowlelge  that  all  you  can  promise  the  nations  of  the 
world  to  come,  from  your  experience  of  the  invariable  laws 
of  nature,  is  perdition^  endless  perdition. 

2.  It  is  manifest,  however,  that  this  destruction  of  nations 
and  desolation  of  empires  must  have  had  a  beginning  some 
time  or  other.  Nations  could  not  perish  before  they  had 
grown,  nor  empires  be  destroyed  till  they  had  accumulated; 
and  during  all  this  period  of  their  growth  and  vigor  the 
experience  of  mankind  would  never  lead  them  to  predict 
their  ruin.  The  sagacious  observer,  beholding  Babylon, 
Nineveh,  Damascus,  and  Tyre,  growing  and  flourishing  dur- 
ing a  period  of  a  thousand  years  past,  could  have  had  no 
reason  from  such  an  experience  to  expect  anything  else 
than  a  thousand  years  of  prosperity  to  come.  Especially 
impossible  is  it  for  human  sagacity,  enlightened  by  experi- 
ence, to  predict  unexampled,  desolations,  destructions  such 
as  the  world  had  never  witnessed. 

How  the  predictions  of  the  Bible  are  predictions  of  un- 
exampled desolations,  and  unparalleled  ruin  of  empires.  The 
desolation  of  any  extensive  region  of  the  earth,  or  the  over- 
throw of  any  great  nation,  was  an  event  absolutely  unknown 
to  the  world  when  the  prophets  of  the  "Bible  began  to  utter 
their  predictions;  unless  the  skeptic  will  allow  the  truth  of 
the  Bible   record  of  the  prcdi-^tion  and  execution  of  the 


232  PROPHECY. 

deluge,  and  tlie  destruction  of  Sodom.  War  and  conquest 
had  indeed  caused  some  provinces  to  change  masters;  one 
nation  had  made  marauding  invasions  on  others,  and  carried 
oflF  cattle  and  slaves ;  but  the  result  of  the  greatest  military 
operation  of  which  we  have  any  record,  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  prophetic  era — the  conquest  of  Palestine  by 
the  Israelites — so  far  from  desolating  the  region,  or  exter- 
minating the  people,  had  been  merely  to  increase  its  pro- 
ductiveness, and  to  drive  its  former  occupants  to  new  set- 
tlements, where  at  that  era  they  were  fully  able  to  cope 
with  their  former  conquerors.  Whatever  the  experience  of 
thirty  centuries  may  have  since  taught  the  nations  concern- 
ing the  certainty  of  the  connection  between  national  crime 
and  national  ruin,  a  long-suffering  God  had  not  then  given 
any  such  signal  examples  of  it,  as  those  of  which  he  gave 
warning  by  the  prophets. 

The  course  of  the  nations  and  cities  founded  after  the 
deluge  had  been  regularly  onward  and  prosperous,  and  they 
were  just  rising  to  the  maturity  of  their  power  and  splen- 
dor when  Jonah,  Micah,  Hosea,  and  Isaiah,  began  to  pro- 
nounce their  sentences.  They  denounced  desolation  and 
solitude  against  nations  more  populous  than  this  continent, 
one  of  whose  cities  enumerated  more  citizens  than  some  of 
our  proud  commonwealths,  and  displayed  buildings,  a  sight 
of  whose  crumbling  ruins  is  deemed  sufficient  recompense 
for  the  perils  of  a  journey  of  six  thousand  miles.  The 
hundred  churches  of  Cincinnati  could  all  have  been  conven- 
iently arranged  in  the  basement  of  the  temple  of  Belus; 
on  the  first  floor  our  hundred  thousand  non-church-going 
citizens  might  have  assembled  to  listen  to  a  lecture  on  spir- 
itualism from  some  eloquent  Chaldean  soothsayer;  and  the 
remaining  seven  stories  would  have  still  been  open  for  the 
accommodation  of  the  natives  of  the  original  Queen  City. 
Every  product  of  earth  was  trafficked  in  the  markets  of 
Tyre;  a  single  Jewish  house  imported  annually  more  gold 


PROPHECY.  233 

than  all  the  banks  of  this  continent  possess;  and  the  whole 
coinage  of  the  United  States  since  1793  would  want  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  dollars  o-f  the  value  of  the  golden  furni- 
ture of  a  single  temple  in  Babylon.  In  fact,  in  the  suburbs 
of  Babylon  or  Nineveh,  Washington  or  Cincinnati  would 
have  been  insignificant  villages;  and  the  stone-fronted  brick 
palaces  of  Broadway  and  the  Fifth  Avenue  would  make 
passable  stables  and  haylofts  for  the  mansions  of  Thebes  or 
Petra. 

So  far,  therefore,  from  being  the  teaching  of  experience, 
there  was  nothing  more  utterly  unexampled  and  unparalleled 
than  the  complete  desolation  of  any  nation  at  the  time  the 
prophets  of  Israel  predicted  such  things.  If  the  world  has 
grown  wiser  since  regarding  the  decline  and  fall  of  empires, 
it  has  gathered  the  best  part  of  its  sagacity  from  the  proph- 
ecies. 

The  degradation  of  the  seed  of  Ham,  and  the  colonization 
of  Asia  by  the  descendants  of  Japhet,  were  however  unde- 
niably predicted  by  Noah  long  before  any  examples  or  ex- 
periences of  such  things  had  occurred.  Centuries  after  the 
degradation  of  Canaan  had  been  predicted,  his  descendants 
were  powerful,  prosperous,  and  colonizing  the  shores  of  the 
world.  But  God  foresaw,  and  compelled  their  ancestor  to 
foretell,  the  corruption  of  the  blood  which  would  reduce 
his  descendants  to  be  servants  of  servants  to  their  breth- 
ren ;  and  now  the  ruins  of  their  cities,  and  of  the  people 
descended  from  Canaan,  are  proverbial  alike  in  the  libraries 
and  slave  markets  of  the  world. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  the  colonization  of  the  world  by 
the  descendants  of  Japhet  was  as  particularly  predicted  by 
Noah  as  the  degradation  of  the  Canaanites;  and  this  can 
not  be  called  a  prediction  of  destruction,  but  rathe :  of  great 
prosperity:  "God  shall  enlarge  Japhet."  Every  emigrant 
ship  which  discharges  its  cargo  at  New  York,  and  every 
new  prairie  farm  in  America,  and  every  sheep  ranch  in 


234  PROPHECY. 

Australia,  and  every  new  cattle  kraal  in  Soutli  Africa  ful- 
fills the  prediction:  "He  shall  dwell  in  the  tents  of  Shem." 
The  various  Greek,  Roman,  English,  and  Russian  Empires 
of  Asia  attest  the  truth.  From  the  Volga  to  the  Amour, 
and  from  Hong  Kong  to  Singapore,  and  from  the  Ganges 
to  the  Indus,  Japhet  to-day  dwells  in  the  tents  of  Shem. 

3.  The  prophecies  of  the  Bible  are  not  vague  general  de- 
nunciations of  natural  decline  and  extinction  to  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  world,  which,  if  they  were  merely  the  exposi- 
tion of  a  universal  natural  law  of  national  death,  they  would 
be ;  nor  yet  the  application  of  any  such  natural  and  inevit- 
able law  to  some  particular  nation,  denouncing  its  destruc- 
tion, without  any  specification  of  time,  manner,  instrument, 
or  cause  of  its  infliction.  They  are  all  the  applications  of 
moral  law — sentences  pronounced  on  account  of  national 
wickedness.  In  every  case  the  prophecy  charges  the  crimes, 
and  specifies  the  punishment,  selected  by  the  Judge  of  all 
the  earth.  The  nations  selected  as  examples  of  divine  jus- 
tice are  as  various  as  their  sentences  are  different ;  covering 
a  space  as  long  as  from  Eastport  to  San  Francisco,  and 
climes  as  various  as  those  between  Canada  and  Cuba ;  peo- 
pled by  men  of  every  shade  of  color  and  degree  of  capacity, 
from  the  negro  servant  of  servants,  to  the  builders  of  the 
Coliseum,  and  the  Pyramids.  They  minutely  describe,  in 
their  own  expressive  symbols,  the  nations  yet  unfounded, 
and  kings  unborn,  who  should  ignorantly  execute  the  judg- 
ments of  the  Lord.  They  predict  the  futures  of  over  thirty 
States,  no  two  of  which  are  alike;  each  prediction  embrac- 
ing a  large  number  of  minute  particulars,  any  one  of  which 
was  utterly  beyond  the  range  of  human  sagacity.  To  predict 
that  a  man  will  die  may  require  no  great  sagacity ;  but  to 
tell  the  year  of  his  death,  that  he  will  die  as  a  criminal,  al- 
lege the  crime  for  which  he  will  be  sentenced,  the  time, 
place,  and  manner  of  his  execution,  and  the  name  of  the 
sheriff  who  will  execute  the  sentence,  is  plainly  beyond  the 


PROPHECY.  235 

skill  of  man.  Such  is  the  character  of  Bible  predictions. 
Zedekiah's  sentence  was  thus  pronounced;  and  thus,  too, 
the  sentences  of  nations  doomed  to  ruin  for  their  crimes  are 
recorded  in  the  Bible,  that  men  may  know  that  the  mouth  of 
the  Lord  hath  spoken  them.  If,  for  instance,  a  prophet  should 
declare  that  New  York  should  be  overturned,  and  become  a 
little  fishing  village,  and  that  her  stones  and  timber,  and  her 
very  dust,  should  be  scraped  oiF  and  thrown  into  the  East 
River;  that  Philadelphia  should  become  a  swamp,  and  never 
be  inhabited,  from  generation  to  generation ;  that  Columbus 
should  be  deserted,  and  become  a  hog-pen ;  that  Louisville 
should  become  a  dry,  barren  desert;  and  New  Orleans  be  ut- 
terly consumed  with  fire,  and  never  be  built  again ;  that  learn- 
ing should  depart  from  Boston,  and  no  travelers  ever  pass 
through  it  any  more;  that  New  England  should  become  the 
basest  of  the  nations,  and  no  native  American  ever  be  Pres- 
ident of  the  Union,  but  that  it  should  be  a  spoil  and  a  prey 
to  the  most  savage  tribes;  and  that  the  Russians  should 
tread  Washington  under  foot  for  a  thousand  years;  but  that 
God  would  preserve  Pittsburg  in  the  midst  of  destruction — 
and  if  all  these  things  should  come  to  pass,  would  any  man 
dare  to  deny  that  the  prophet  spake  not  the  dictates  of  hu- 
man sagacity,  or  the  calculations  of  genius,  but  the  words 
of  God? 

To  attempt  to  illustrate  the  divine  wisdom  displayed  in  a 
system  of  connected  predictions,  covering  the  destiny  of 
the  nations  of  the  world,  and  extending  Irom  the  dawn  of 
history  to  the  end  of  time,  by  presenting  two  or  three  in- 
stances of  the  fulfillment  of  specific  predictions,  would  be 
something  like  exhibiting  a  fragment  of  a  column  as  a  mon- 
ument of  the  skill  of  the  architect  of  a  temple;  yet,  as 
such  a  fragment  may  excite  the  curiosity  of  the  traveler  to 
visit  the  structure  whence  it  was  taken,  I  shall  present  two 
or  three  prophecies  in  which  specific  predictions  are  given, 
concerning  the  geographical^  political^  social^  and  reUgious 


236  PROPHECY. 

condition  of  three  of  the  great  nations  of  antiquity — Egypt, 
Judeaj  and  Babylon — the  fulfillment  of  which  is  spread 
over  the  surface  of  empires  and  the  ruins  of  cities,  patent 
to  all  travelers  at  the  present  hour,  and  abundantly  attested 
in  many  volumes.* 

Could  human  sagacity  have  calculated  that  Egypt — the 
most  defensible  country  in  the  world,  bounded  on  the  south 
by  inaccessible  mountains,  on  the  east  by  the  Red  Sea,  on 
the  west  by  the  trackless,  burning  desert;  able  to  defend 
the  mouths  of  her  river  with  a  powerful  navy,  and  to  drown 
an  invading  army  every  year  by  the  inundation  of  the  Nile ; 
which  had  not  only  maintained  her  independence,  but  ex- 
tended her  conquests  for  a  thousand  years  past,  whose  vic- 
torious king,  Apries,  had  just  sent  an  expedition  against 
Cyprus,  besieged  and  taken  Gaza  and  Sidon,  vanquished  the 
Tyrians  by  sea,  mastered  Phoenicia  and  Palestine,  and 
boasted  that  not  even  a  god  could  deprive  him  of  his  pos- 
sessions— Egypt,  which  had  given  arts,  sciences,  and  idola- 
try to  half  the  world,  and  which  had  not  risen  to  the  full 
height  of  its  world-wide  fame,  or  the  extent  of  its  influence 
for  twenty-five  years  after  the  predictionf — that  Egypt 
should  be  invaded,  conquered,  spoiled,  become  a  prey  to 
strangers  and  evermore  to  strangers,  never  have  a  native 
prince,  sink  into  barbarism,  renounce  idolatry,  and  become 
famous  for  her  desolations?  Yet  the  Bible  predictions  are 
specific  on  all  these  matters :  "/  will  make  the  rivers  dry, 
and  sell  the  land  into  the  hand  of  the  wicked:  and  I  will 
make  the  land  waste,  and  all  that  is  therein,  hy  the  hand  of 
strangers:  I  the  Lord  have  spoken  it.     Thus  saith  the  Lord 

*  Newton  on  the  Prophecies,  and  Keith  on  the  Prophecies,  are  to 
be  found  in  all  respectable  libraries.  The  former  contains  valuable 
extracts  from  ancient  historians;  the  latter  from  the  journals  and 
engravings  of  travelers. 

t  Wilkinson's  Ancient  Egyptians,  I.  169.    Herodotus,  II.  1G9. 


PROPHECY.  237 

God;  I  will  also  destroy  the  idols,  and  I  will  cause  the  im- 
ages to  cease  out  of  Noph;  and  there  shall  he  no  more  a 
prince  of  the  land  of  Egi/pt.'^ 

Let  Infidels  read  the  fulfillment  of  these  predictions,  as 
described  by  Infidels:  ''Such  is  the  state  of  Egypt.  De- 
prived twenty-three  centuries  ago  of  her  natural  proprietors, 
she  has  seen  her  fertile  fields  successively  a  prey  to  the  Per- 
sians, the  Macedonians,  the  Romans,  the  Greeks,  the  Arabs, 
the  Georgians,  and  at  length  the  race  of  Tartars  distin- 
guished by  the  name  of  the  Ottoman  Turks.  The  Mame- 
lukes, purchased  as  slaves  and  introduced  as  soldiers,  soon 
usurped  the  power  and  selected  a  leader.  If  their  first  es- 
tablishment was  a  singular  event,  their  continuance  is  not 
less  extraordinary;  they  are  replaced  by  slaves  brought 
from  their  original  country."f  Says  Gibbon:  "A  more  un- 
just and  absurd  constitution  can  not  be  devised  than  that 
which  condemns  the  natives  of  the  country  to  perpetual 
servitude  under  the  arbitrary  dominion  of  strangers  and 
slaves.  Yet  such  has  been  the  state  of  Egypt  about  five 
hundred  years.  The  most  illustrious  sultans  of  the  Baharite 
and  Beyite  dynasties  were  themselves  promoted  from  the 
Tartar  and  Circassian  bands;  and  the  four  and  twenty  beys, 
or  military  chiefs,  have  ever  been  succeeded,  not  by  their 
sons,  but  by  their  servants. "J  Mehemet  Ali  cut  ofi"  the 
Mamelukes,  but  still  Egypt  is  ruled  by  the  Turks,  and  the 
present  ruler  (Ibrahim  Pasha)  is  a  foreigner.  It  is  need- 
less to  remind  the  reader  that  the  idols  are  cut  off.  Neither 
the  nominal  Christians  of  Egypt,  nor  the  iconoclastic  Mos- 
lem, allow  images  to  appear  among  them.  The  rivers,  too, 
are  drying  up.  In  one  day's  travel  forty  dry  water-courses 
will  be  crossed  in  the  Delta;  and  water-skins  are  needed 


*  Ezekiel,  chap.  xxx. 

t  Volney's  Travels,  1,  74,  103. 

X  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  lix. 


238  PROPHECY. 

now  around  the  ruined  cities  whose  walls  were  blockaded  by 
Greek  and  Roman  navies. 

"/i{  shall  he  the  basest  of  the  kingdoms;  neither  shall  it 
exalt  itself  any  more  above  the  nations:  for  I  will  diminish 
them,  that  they  shall  no  more  bear  rule  over  the  nations."^ 
Every  traveler  will  attest  the  truth  of  this  prediction.  The 
wretched  peasantry  are  rejoiced  to  labor  for  any  who  will 
pay  them  five  cents  a  day,  and  eager  to  hide  the  treasure  in 
the  ground  from  the  rapacious  tax-gatherer.  I  have  seen 
British  horses  refuse  to  eat  the  meal  ground  from  the  mix- 
ture of  wheat,  barley,  oats,  lentiles,  millet,  and  a  hundred 
unknown  seeds  of  weeds  and  collections  of  filth,  which  forms 
the  produce  of  their  fields.  For  poverty,  vermin,  and  dis- 
ease, Egypt  is  proverbial.  Let  us  hear  a  scofi'er's  testimony, 
however:  "In  Egypt  there  is  no  middle  class,  neither  no- 
bility, clergy,  merchants,  nor  landholders.  A  universal  air 
of  misery  in  all  the  traveler  meets  points  out  to  him  the 
rapacity  of  oppression,  and  the  distrust  attendant  upon 
slavery.  The  profound  ignorance  of  the  inhabitants  equally 
prevents  them  from  perceiving  the  causes  of  their  evils,  or 
applying  the  necessary  remedies.  Ignorance,  diffused  through 
every  class,  extends  its  effects  to  every  species  of  moral  and 
physical  knowledge.  Nothing  is  talked  of  but  intestine 
troubles,  the  public  misery,  pecuniary  extortions,  and  bas- 
tinadoes, "f 

The  objector  perhaps  will  allege  in  extenuation  the  mod- 
ern improvements  now  in  progress,  the  Suez  Canal,  the  rail- 
roads, the  steamboats  on  the  Nile,  the  bridge  across  the  Nile 
at  Cairo,  and  the  sugar  and  cotton  plantations. 

But  if  these  were  as  evident  tokens  of  progress  in  Egypt, 
as  they  would  be  in  America,  they  would  not  in  the  least 
invalidate  the  facts  of  the  past  degradation  of  Egypt  for 


*  Ezekiel,  chap.  xxix. 
t  Volnoy  I.  190. 


PROPHECY.  239 

3enturies.  But  these  speculations  of  the  Khedive  are  of 
no  advantage  to  the  people ;  rather,  on  the  contrary,  do  they 
afford  him  additional  opportunities  of  exacting  forced  labor 
from  the  miserable  peasants.  I  have  seen  the  population  of 
several  villages,  forced  to  leave  their  own  fields  in  the  spring, 
to  march  down  to  an  old,  filthy  canal,  near  Cairo,  and  al- 
most within  sight  of  the  gate  of  the  palace,  men,  and  wo- 
men, and  little  boys,  and  girls,  like  those  of  our  Sabbath- 
schools,  scooping  up  the  stinking  mud  and  water  with  their 
hands,  into  baskets,  carrying  them  on  their  heads  up  the 
steep  bank,  beaten  with  long  sticks  by  the  taskmasters  to 
hasten  their  steps ;  while  steam  dredges  lay  unused  within 
sight.     Egypt  is  still  the  basest  of  the  nations. 

Here,  then^  we  have  conclusive  proof  of  the  fulfillment 
at  this  day  of  four  distinct,  specific,  and  improbable  Bible 
predictions:  concerning  the  country,  the  rulers,  the  relig- 
ion, and  the  people  of  Egypt. 

Let  us  note  now  a  distinct  and  totally  different  judgment 
pronounced  against  the  transgressors  of  another  land.  Pre- 
eminent in  inflicting  destruction  on  others,  her  retribution 
was  to  be  extreme.  Degradation  and  slavery  were  to  be  the 
portion  of  the  learned  Egyptians,  but  utter  extinction  is  the 
doom  of  mighty  Babylon.  It  is  written  in  the  Bible  con- 
cerning the  land  where  the  farmer  was  accustomed  to  reap 
two  hundred-fold:  '-'■Cut  off  the  sower  from  Baht/lon,  and 
him  that  handleth  the  sickle  in  the  time  of  harvest,  -i*  *  * 
Ever?/  purpose  of  the  Lord  shall  he  performed  against  Baby- 
lon, to  make  the  land  of  Babylon  a  desolation  without  an  in- 
habitant. *  *  *  Behold  the  hindermost  of  the  nations 
shall  be  a  wilderness,  a  dry  land,  and  a  desert.  *  *  * 
Because  of  the  wrath  of  the  Lord  it  shall  not  be  inhabited, 
but  it  shall  be  wholly  desolate  "* 

Proofs  in  abundance  of  the  fulfillment  of  these  predic- 


*  Jeremiah,  chap.?.  1.  and  11. 


240  PROPHECY. 

tions  present  themselves  in  every  volume  of  travels  in  As- 
syria and  Chaldca.  "  Those  splendid  accounts  of  the  Baby- 
lonian lands  yielding  crops  of  grain  of  two  and  three  hun- 
dred fold,  compared  with  the  modern  face  of  the  country, 
afford  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  singular  desolation  to  which 
it  has  been  subjected.  The  canals  at  present  can  only  be 
traced  by  their  decayed  banks.  The  soil  of  this  desert  con- 
sists of  a  hard  clay,  mixed  with  mud,  which  at  noon  be- 
comes so  heated  with  the  sun's  rays,  that  I  found  it  too  hot 
to  w^alk  over  it  with  any  degree  of  comfort."*  ''  That  it  was 
at  some  former  period  in  a  far  different  state  is  evident  from 
the  number  of  canals  by  which  it  is  traversed,  now  dry  and 
neglected;  and  the  quantity  of  heaps  of  earth,  covered  with 
fragments  of  brick  and  broken  tiles,  which  are  seen  in  every 
direction — the  indisputable  traces  of  former  cultivation,  "f 
"  The  abundance  of  the  country  has  vanished  as  clean  away 
as  if  the  besom  of  desolation  had  swept  it  from  north  to 
south ;  the  whole  land,  from  the  outskirts  of  Babylon  to  the 
farthest  stretch  of  sight,  lying  a  melancholy  waste.  Not  a 
habitable  spot  appears  for  countless  mi7es."J 

As  the  desolation  of  the  country  was  to  be  extraordinary, 
so  the  desolation  of  the  city  of  Babylon  was  to  be  remark- 
able. When  the  prophet  wrote,  its  walls  had  been  raised 
to  the  height  of  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet,  and  made 
broad  enough  for  six  chariots  to  drive  upon  them  abreast. 
From  its  hundred  brazen  gates  issued  the  armies  which 
trampled  under  foot  the  liberties  of  mankind,  and  presented 
their  lives  to  the  nod  of  a  despot,  who  slew  whom  he  would, 
and  whom  he  would  allowed  to  live.  Twenty  years'  provis- 
ions were  collected  within  its  walls,  and  the  world  would 
not  believe  that  an  enemy  could  enter  its  gates.     Neverthc- 


♦  Mignon's  Travels,  81. 

t  Trans.  Bombay  Lit.  Soc.  T.  123. 

t  Porter's  Babylonia,  II.  285. 


PROPHECY.  241 

less,  the  prophets  of  God  pronounced  against  it  a  doom  of 
destruction  as  extraordinary  as  the  pride  and  wickedness 
which  procured  it.  Tyre,  the  London  of  Asia,  was  to  he- 
come  a  place  for  the  spreading  of  nets^^  and  the  Infidel  Vol- 
ney  tells  us  its  commerce  had  declined  to  a  trifling  fishery; 
but  even  that  implies  some  few  resident  inhabitants.  Kab- 
bah, of  Ammon,  was  to  become  a  stable  for  camels  and  a 
couching  place  for  flocks  f  Lord  Lindsay  reports  that  "he 
could  not  sleep  amidst  its  ruins  for  the  bleating  of  sheep, 
that  the  dung  of  camels  covers  the  ruins  of  its  palaces,  and 
that  the  only  building  left  entire  in  its  Acropolis  is  used  as 
a.sheepfold."J  Yet  sheepfolds  imply  that  the  tents  of  their 
Arab  owners  are  near,  and  that  some  human  beings  would 
occasionally  reside  near  its  ruins.  But  desolation,  solitude, 
and  utter  abandonment  to  the  wild  beasts  of  the  desert  is 
the  specific. and  clearly  predicted  doom  of  the  world's  proud 
capital.  The  most  expressive  symbols  are  selected  from 
the  desert  to  portray  its  desertion. 

"Babylon,  the  glory  of  kingdoms,  the  beauty  of  the  Chal- 
dees^  excellency,  shall  he  as  when  God  overthrew  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah.  It  shall  never  he  inhabited,  neither  shall  it  he 
dwelt  in  from  generation  to  generation:  neither  shall  the 
Arabian  pitch  tent  there;  neitJier  shall  the  shepherds  make 
their  fold  there:  hut  wild  beasts  of  the  desert  shall  lie  there; 
and  their  houses  shall  he  full  of  doleful  creatures;  and  owls 
shall  dwell  there,  and  satyrs  shall  dance  there.  And  the 
wild  beasts  of  the  islands  shall  cry  in  their  desolate  houses, 
and  dragons  in  their  pleasant  palaces.^^^ 

Every  traveler  attests  the  fulfillment  of  this  strange  pre- 
diction.    "  It  is  a  tenantless  and  desolate  metropolis,"  says 

*  Ezeldel,  chap.  xxvi. 
t  Ezekiel,  chap.  xxv. 
t  Lindsays  Travels,  II.  78,  117. 
§  Isaiah,  chap.  xiii. 
16 


242  PROPHECY. 

Mignon;  who,  though  fully  armed,  and  attended  by  six 
Arabs,  could  not  induce  them  by  any  reward  to  pass  the 
night  among  its  ruins,  from  the  apprehension  of  evil  spirits. 
So  completely  fulfilled  is  the  prophecy,  ^^The  Arabian  shall 
not  pitch  his  tent  there."  The  same  voice  which  called 
camels  and  flocks  to  the  palaces  of  Rabbah,  summoned  a 
very  diflerent  class  of  tenants  for  the  palaces  of  Babylon. 
Rabbah  vv'as  to  be  a  sheepfold,  Babylon  a  menagerie  of  wild 
beasts;  a  very  specific  difi'erence,  and  very  improbable.  One 
of  the  later  Persian  kings,  however,  after  it  was  destroyed 
and  deserted,  repaired  its  walls,  converted  it  into  a  vast 
hunting-ground,  and  stocked  it  with  all  manner  of  wild 
beasts;  and  to  this  day  the  apes  of  the  Spice  Islands,  and 
the  lion3  of  the  African  deserts,  meet  in  its  palaces,  and 
howl  their  testimony  to  the  truth  of  God's  Word.  Sir  E. 
K.  Porter  saw  two  majestic  lions  in  the  Mujelibe  (the  ruins 
of  the  palace),  and  Fraser  thus  describes  the  chambers  of 
fallen  Babylon :  '-  There  were  dens  of  wild  beasts  in  various 
places,  and  Mr.  Rich  perceived  in  some  a  strong  smell,  like 
thut  of  a  lion.  Bones  of  sheep  and  other  animals  were 
seen  in  the  cavities,  with  numbers  of  bats  and  owls." 

Various  destructions  were  predicted  for  Babylon.  "/ 
will  make  it  a  habitation  for  the  bittern,  and  pools  of  water,'''''' 
says  one  prophecy,  '^ffer  cities  are  a  desolation,  a  dry  land, 
and  a  wilderness,' '-f  says  another.  How  can  such  contra- 
dictions be  true?  says  the  scoff"er. 

But  the  scoffer's  contradiction  is  a  fact.  God  can  cause 
the  most  discordant  agencies  to  agree  in  effecting  his  pur- 
pose. Babylon  is  alternately  an  overflowed  swamp,  from 
the  inundations  of  the  obstructed  Euphrates,  and  an  arid 
desert,  under  the  scorching  rays  of  an  Eastern  sun.  Says 
Mignon:  "Morasses  and  ponds  tracked  the  ground  in  va- 


*  Isaiah,  chap.  xiv. 
t  Jerc.aiah,  chap.  li. 


PROPHECY.  243 

rious  places.  For  a  long  time  after  the  subsiding  of  the 
Euphrates  great  part  of  this  place  is  little  better  than  a 
swamp."  At  another  season  it  was  "a  dry  waste  and  burn- 
ing plain."  Even  at  the  same  period,  "one  part  on  the 
western  side  is  low  and  marshy,  and  another  an  arid  desert."* 

Another,  and  widely  different  agent,  to  be  employed  in 
the  destruction  of  the  great  center  of  tyranny  and  idolatry, 
is  thus  specifically  and  definitely  indicated  in  the  predic- 
tion: '^Behold,  I  am  against  thee,  0  destroying  mountain, 
saith  the  Lord,  which  destroyest  all  the  earth:  and  I  will 
stretch  out  my  hand  upon  thee,  and  roll  thee  down  from  the 
rocks,  and  will  make  thee  a  hurnt  mountain  And  they  shall 
not  take  of  thee  a  stone  for  a  corner,  nor  a  stone  for  foun- 
dations; hut  thou  shalt  be  desolat^forever,  saith-the  LordJ^f 

"There  is  one  fact,"  says  Eraser,  "in  connection  with  the 
most  remarkable  of  these  relics  (the  Birs  Nimrod),  which 
we  can  not  dismiss  without  a  few  more  observations.  All 
travelers  who  have  ascended  the  Birs  have  taken  notice  of 
the  singular  heaps  of  brick-work  scattered  on  the  summit  of 
this  mound,  at  the  foot  of  the  remnant  of  the  wall  still 
standing.  To  the  writer  they  appeared  the  most  striking  of 
all  the  ruins.  That  they  have  undergone  the  most  violent 
action  of  fire  is  evident  from  the  complete  vitrification  which 
has  taken  place  in  many  of  the  masses.  Yet  how  a  heat  sufii- 
cient  to  produce  such  an  effect  could  have  been  applied  at 
such  a  height  from  the  ground  is  unaccountable.  They  now 
lie  on  a  spot  elevated  two  hundred  feet  above  the  plain,  and 
must  have  fallen  from  some  much  more  lofty  position,  for 
the  structure  which  still  remains,  and  of  which  they  maybe 
supposed  originally  to  have  formed  a  part,  bears  no  marks 
of  fire.  The  building  originally  can  not  have  contained  any 
great  proportion  of  combustible  materials,  and  to  produce 

*  Mignon,  139. 

t  Jeremiah,  chap.  11. 


244  PROPHECY. 

SO  intense  a  heat  by  substances  carried  to  such  an  elevation 
would  have  been  almost  impossible,  for  want  of  space  to 
pile  them  on.  Nothing,  we  should  be  inclined  to  say,  short 
of  the  most  powerful  action  of  electric  fire,  could  have  pro- 
duced the  complete,  yet  circumscribed,  fusion  which  is  here 
observed.  Although  fused  into  a  solid  mass,  the  courses  of 
bricks  are  still  visible,  identifying  them  with  the  standing 
pile  above,  but  so  hardened  by  the  power  of  heat,  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  break  ofi"  the  smallest  piece;  and, 
though  porous  in  texture,  and  full  of  air-holes  and  cavities, 
like  other  bricks,  they  require,  on  being  submitted  to  the 
stone-cutter's  lathe,  the  same  machinery  as  is  used  to  dress 
the  hardest  pebbles."* 

The  doom  of  Nineveh,  the  great  rival  and  predecessor  of 
Babylon,  was  also  predicted  as  the  result  of  two  apparently 
contradictory  agencies — an  overrunning  flood  and  a  consum- 
ing fire.  But  both  these  antagonistic  elements  conspired  to 
devour  her.  The  river,  with  an  overrunning  flood,  swept 
away  a  large  portion  of  the  walls.  The  besiegers  entered 
through  the  breach,  and  set  the  city  on  fire.  The  charcoal, 
burnt  beans,  and  slabs  of  half-calcined  alabaster,  in  the 
British  Museum,  demonstrate  the  fulfillment  of  the  predic- 
tion. 

Egypt  was  to  be  reduced  to  slavery  and  degradation, 
Babylonia  to  utter  barrenness  and  desolation ;  but  a  differ- 
ent and  still  more  incredible  doom  is  pronounced  in  the 
Bible  upon  Judea  and  its  people.  The  land  was  to  be  emp- 
tied of  its  people,  and  remain  uncultivated,  retaining  all  its 
former  fertility,  while  the  people  were  to  be  scattered  over 
all  the  earth,  yet  never  to  lose  their  distinct  nationality,  nor 
be  amalgamated  with  their  neighbors:  ^^ I  will  make  your 
cities  waste,  and  bring  your  sanctuaries  vnto  desolation,  and  I 
will  not  smell  the  savor  of  your  sweet  odors      And  I  will 

*  Fraser's  Mesopotamia,  page  145. 


PROPHECY.  245 

hring  the  land  into  desolation:  and  your  enemies  which  dwell 
therein  shall  be  astonished  al  it.  And  I  will  scatter  you 
among  the  heathen^  and  will  draw  out  a  sword  after  you: 
and  your  land  shall  he  desolate,  and  your  cities  waste.  Then 
shall  the  land  enjoy  her  Sabbaths,  as  long  as  it  lieth  desolate, 
and  ye  he  in  your  enemies^  land;  even  then  shall  the  land 
rest,  and  enjoy  her  Sabbaths."^  "  Until  the  cities  he  wasted 
without  inhabitant,  and  the  houses  without  man,  and  the  land 
he  utterly  desolate,  and  the  Lord  have  removed  men  far  away, 
and  there  be  a  great  forsaking  in  the  midst  of  the  land.  But 
yet  in  it  shall  be  a  tenth,  and  it  shall  return,  and  shall  he 
eaten:  as  a  teil-tree,  and  as  an  oak,  whose  substance  is  in 
them,  when  they  cast  their  leaves.'' f  "  The  generation  to  come 
of  your  children  that  shall  rise  up  after  you,  and  the  stranger 
that  shall  come  from  a  far  land,  shall  say,  *  *  * 
Wherefore  hath  the  Lord  done  thus  unto  this  land?  What 
meaneth  the  heat  of  this  great  anger?  "X 

It  is  superfluous  to  adduce  proof  of  the  undeniable  and 
acknowledged  fulfillment  of  these  predictions,  but  as  an  ex- 
ample of  the  way  in  which  God  causes  scoffers  to  fulfill  the 
prophecies,  let  us  again  hear  Volney:  "I  journeyed  in  the 
empire  of  the  Ottomans,  and  traversed  the  provinces  which 
were  formerly  the  kingdoms  of  Egypt  and  Syria.  I  enu- 
merated the  kingdoms  of  Damascus  and  Idumea,  of  Jeru- 
salem and  Samaria.  This  Syria,  said  I  to  myself,  now  al- 
most depopulated,  then  contained  a  hundred  flourishing 
cities,  and  abounded  with  towns,  villages,  and  hamlets. 
What  has  become  of  so  many  productions  of  the  hand  of 
man  ?  What  has  become  of  those  ages  of  abundance  and 
of  life?  Great  God!  from  whence  proceed  such  melancholy 
revolutions  f  For  what  cause  is  the  fortune  of  these  coun- 
tries so  strikingly  changed?      Why  are  so  many  cities  de- 

*  Leviticus,  chap.  xxvi. 

t  Isaiah,  chap.  vi. 

X  Deuteronomy,  chap.  xziz. 


246  PROPHECY. 

stroyed?  Why  is  not  that  ancient  population  reproduced 
and  perpetuated  ?  A  mysterious  God  exercises  his  incom- 
prehensible judgments.  He  has  doubtless  pronounced  a 
secret  malediction  against  the  earth.  He  has  struck  with  a 
curse  the  present  race  of  men  in  revenge  of  past  genera- 
tions."* The  malediction  is  no  secret  to  any  who  will  read 
the  twenty  ninth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy ;  nor  is  the  aveng- 
ing of  the  quarrel  of  Grod's  covenant  conjEined  to  the  sins  of 
past  generations.  The  philosopher  who  would  understand 
the  fates  of  cities  and  empires  should  read  the  prophecies. 

The  Word  of  God  specifies  no  less  distinctly  and  defi- 
nitely the  destiny  of  the  Jewish  than  of  the  Babylonian 
capital,  but  fixes  on  a  widely  different  kind  of  destruction. 
Babylon  was  never  to  be  built  again,  but  devoted  to  solitude; 
busy  Tyre  to  become  a  place  for  spreading  nets ;  the  cara- 
vans, which  once  brought  the  wealth  of  India  through 
Petra,  were  to  cease,  and  the  doom  was  to  "cut  off  him  that 
passe th  by  and  him  that  returneth."  But  Jerusalem,  it 
was  predicted,  should  long  feel  the  miseries  of  a  multitude 
of  oppressors,  should  never  enjoy  the  luxury  of  a  solitary 
woe,  but  '■^he  trodden  down  of  the  Gentiles.^^f  Saracens, 
Tartars,  Turks,  and  Crusaders,  Gentiles  from  every  nation 
of  the  earth,  fulfilled  the  prediction  of  old,  even  as  hosts 
of  pilgrims  from  all  parts  of  the  earth  do  at  this  day. 

So  minute  and  specific  are  the  predictions  of  Scripture, 
that  the  fate  of  particular  1)uildings  is  accurately  defined. 
One  temple  to  the  living  God,  and  only  one,  raised  its  walls 
in  this  world,  which  he  had  made  for  his  worship.  Its  fre- 
quenters perverted  it  from  its  proper  use  of  leading  them 
to  confess  their  sinfulness,  to  seek  pardon  through  the 
promised  Savior  to  whom  its  ceremonies  pointed,  and  to 
learn  to  bo  holy,  as  the  God  of  that  temple  was  holy.    They 


*  Volney's  Kuins  of  Empires,  Book  I. 
t  Luke,  chap.  xxi. 


PROPHECY.  247 

hoped  that  the  holiness  of  the  place  would  screen  them  in 
the  indulgence  of  pride,  formality,  and  wickedness.  The 
temple  of  the  Lord,  instead  of  the  Lord  of  the  temple,  was 
the  object  of  their  veneration.  But  the  doom  went  forth, 
"  Therefore  for  your  sakes  shall  Zion  he  plowed  as  a  field^ 
and  Jerusalem  shall  become  as  heaps,  and  the  mountain  of 
the  house  like  the  high  places  of  the  forest."  History  has 
preserved,  and  the  Jews  to  this  day  curse  the  name  of  the 
soldier,  Terentius  llufus,  who  plowed  up  the  foundations  of 
the  temple.  It  long  continued  in  this  state.  Bu'  the  Em- 
peror Julian  the  Apostate  conceived  the  idea  of  falsifying 
the  prediction  of  Jesus,  ^^ Behold  your  house  is  left  unto  you 
desolate"^  and  sent  his  friend  Alypius,  with  a  Roman  army, 
and  abundant  treasure,  to  rebuild  it.  The  Jev/s  flocked 
from  all  parts  to  assist  in  the  work.  Spades  and  pickaxes 
of  silver  were  provided  by  the  vanity  of  the  rich,  and  the 
rubbish  was  transported  in  mantles  of  silk  and  purple.  But 
they  were  obliged  to  desist  from  the  attempt,  for  '-horrible 
balls  of  fire  breaking  out  from  the  foundations  with  repeated 
attacks,  rendered  the  place  inaccessible  to  the  scorched 
workmen,  and  the  element  driving  them  to  a  distance  from 
time  to  time,  the  enterprise  was  dropped. "f  Such  is  the 
testimony  of  a  heathen,  confirmed  by  Jews  and  Christians. 
The  inclosures  of  the  mosque  of  Omar,  forbidding  them  all 
access  to  the  spot  on  which  it  stood,  leave  it  desolate  to  the 
Jews  to  this  day.  I  have  seen  them  (in  1872)  kissing  a  few 
large  stones,  supposed  to  belong  to  its  foundations  or  sub- 
structures, from  the  outside ;  for  which  miserable  privilege 
they  were  obliged  to  pay  their  oppressors.  On  approaching 
the  spot  from  the  Zion  gate,  right  across  Mount  Zion  to  the 
temple  ruins,  our  way  lay  through  a  plowed  field  of  young 
barley,  and  gardens  of  cauliflowers  hedged  with  enormous 
rows  of  cactus.     To  this  day  Zion  is  plowed  as  a  field. 

*  Micah,  chap.  iii.    Matthew,  chap.  xxii. 
t  Ammianus  Marcellus,  23d  chap.  I. 


348  PROPHECY. 

4.  No  sane  man  can  believe  that  such  minute  and  accu- 
rate predictions  of  various  and  improbable  events  could  be 
the  result  of  human  calculations;  yet  there  is  another  fea- 
ture of  the  Bible  prophecies  still  farther  removed  beyond 
the  reach  of  human  sagacity,  and  that  is,  remarkable  and 
unaccountable  preservation  amidst  the  general  ruin.  If,  as 
skeptics  allege,  destruction  is  the  natural  and  inevitable 
doom,  then  preservation  is  supernatural  and  miraculous — a 
miracle  of  divine  power  controlling  nature ;  and  its  predic- 
tion is  a  miracle  of  divine  wisdom.  Now  the  prophecies  of 
the  Bible  contain  several  very  definite,  and  widely  different 
predictions  of  the  preservation  of  people  and  cities  from  the 
general  destruction.  We  shall  refer  in  this  case  also  to 
those  of  whose  fulfillment  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt, 
for  the  facts  are  palpable  and  undeniable  at  the  present  day. 

The  prediction  of  the  character  and  fate  of  the  Arabs 
stands  out  a  remarkable  contrast  to  the  predictions  of  the 
destruction  of  the  surrounding  nations.  Of  their  ances- 
tor, Tshmael,  it  was  predicted :  "  He  will  be  a  wild  man  ;  his 
hand  shall  be  against  every  man,  and  every  man's  hand 
against  him ;  and  he  shall  dwell  in  the  presence  of  all  his 
brethren."*  The  nomade  and  warlike  habits  of  the  sons  of 
Ishmael  are  here  distinctly  predicted ;  and  the  singular  an- 
omaly which  exempts  them  alone,  of  all  the  people  of  the 
earth,  from  the  law,  "  They  that  take  the  sword,  shall  per- 
ish by  the  sword."  The  unconquered  Arab  laughs  alike  at 
the  Persian,  Greek,  Roman,  Turkish,  and  French  invaders 
of  his  deserts,  levies  tribute  on  all  who  enter  his  territory, 
and  dwells  to-day,  a  free  man,  in  the  presence  of  all  his 
brethren,  as  God  foretold. 

Of  the  Israelitish  nation  God  predicted,  that  it  should  be 
a  peculiar,  distinct  people,  separate  from  the  other  nations 
of  .the  world  :  "  io,  the  people  shall  dwell  alone^  and  shall 

*  Genesis,  chap.  xvi.  12.  ^ 


PROPHECY.  249 

not  he  reckoned  among  the  nations."^  In  apparent  contra- 
diction to  this  separation,  he  further  threatened  to  punish 
them  for  their  sins,  by  dispersing  them  over  the  world :  "/ 
will  scatter  you  among  the  heathen,  and  will  draw  out  a 
sword  after  yow."f  ^'For  lo,  I  will  command,  and  I  will 
sift  the  house  of  Israel  among  all  nations,  like  as  corn  is 
sifted  in  a  sieve,  yet.  shall  not  the  last  grain  fall  upon  the 
earthy \  It  was  further  threatened,  as  if  to  make  sure  of 
their  national  destruction:  ^' And  among  these  nations  shall 
thou  find  no  ease,  neither  shall  the  sole  of  thy  foot  have  rest : 
hut  the  Lord  shall  give  thee  there  a  tremhling  heart,  and  fail- 
ing of  eyes,  and  sorrow  of  mind :  and  thy  life  shall  hang  in 
douht  hefore  thee;  and  thou  shall  fear  day  and  night,  and 
shall  have  none  assurance  of  thy  life^^  Contrary  to  all  ap- 
pearances, and  in  spite  of  all  this  dispersion  and  persecu- 
tion, it  is  predicted  that  Israel  shall  still  exist  as  a  nation, 
and  be  restored  to  the  favor  of  God,  and  that  prosperity 
which  ever  accompanies  it :  ^^  And  yet  for  all  that,  when  they 
he  in  the  land  of  their  enemies,  I  will  not  cast  them  away^ 
neither  will  I  ahhor  them,  to  destroy  them  utterly,  and  to 
hreak  my  covenant  with  them :  for  I  am  the  Lord  their 
God.'^W 

Here  are  four  distinct  predictions,  of  national  peculiarity, 
universal  dispersion,  grievous  oppression,  and  remarkable 
preservation.  The  fulfillment  is  obvious,  and  undeniable. 
You  need  no  commentary  to  explain  it.  Go  into  any  cloth- 
ing-store on  Western  Row,  or  into  the  synagogue  in  Broad- 
way, and  you  will  see  it.  The  Infidel  is  sorely  perplexed 
to  give  any  account  of  this  great  phenomenon.  How  does 
it  happen  that  this  singular  people  is  dispersed  over  all  the 

*■  Numbers,  chap,  xxiii. 
t  Leviticus,  chap.  xxvi. 
X  Amos,  chap.  ix. 
§  Deuteronomy,  chap,  xxviii. 
B  Leviticus,  chap.  xxvi. 


250  PROPHECY. 

earth,  and  yet  distinct  and  unamalgamated  with  any  other  ? 
How  does  it  happen  that  for  eighteen  hundred  years  they 
have  resisted  all  the  influences  of  nature,  and  all  the  cus- 
toms of  society,  and  all  the  powers  of  persecution,  driving 
them  toward  amalgamation,  and  irresistible  in  all  other  in- 
stances (  In  the  face  of  the  power  of  the  Chinese  Empire, 
in  spite  of  the  tortures  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  amid 
the  chaos  of  African  nationalities,  and  the  fusion  of  Amer- 
ican democracy,  in  the  plains  of  Australia,  and  in  the  streets 
of  San  Francisco,  the  religion,  customs,  and  physiognomy 
of  the  children  of  Israel  are  as  distinct  this  day  as  they 
were  three  thousand  years  ago,  when  Moses  wrote  them  in 
the  Pentateuch,  and  Shishak  painted  them  on  the  tombs  of 
Medinct  Abou.  How  does  the  Infidel  account  for  it?  It 
will  not  do  to  allege  the  favorite  story  about  purity  of  blood 
and  Caucasian  race  ;  for  the  question  is,  How  does  it  happen 
that  this  people,  and  this  people  alone,  have  kept  the  blood 
pure ;  while  all  other  races  are  so  mingled  that  no  other 
race  can  be  fouud  pure  on  earth  ?  Besides,  lest  any  should 
suppose  such  a  cause  sufficient  for  their  preservation,  an- 
other nation,  descended  from  the  same  father  and  the  same 
mother — the  children  of  Jacob's  twin  brother — has  utterly 
perished,  and  there  is  not  any  remaining  of  the  house  of 
Esau. 

Human  sagacity,  with  all  the  facts  before  its  face,  can 
not  give  any  rational  account  of  the  causes  of  this  anomaly. 
It  can  not  tell  to-day  why  this  people  exists  separate  from, 
and  scattered  through  all  nations,  from  Kamschatka  to  New 
Zealand ;  how,  then,  could  it  foretell,  three  thousand  years 
ago,  this  singular  exception  to  all  the  laws  of  national  exist- 
ence? While  the  sun  and  moon  endure,  the  nation  of 
Israel  shall  exist  as  God's  witness  to  God's  word,  an  unde- 
niable proof  that  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it. 

A  very  peculiar  feature  of  the  desolation  of  Israel  was 
the  desolation^  but  not  the  destruction  of  the  cities.   In  most 


PROPHECY.  251 

cases  of  the  desolations  of  war,  the  cities  have  been  burned 
and  the  buildings  destroyed.  There  is  no  shelter  for  man 
or  beast  in  the  mounds  of  rubbish  which  cover  the  ruined 
cities  of  Assyria.  Where  the  buildings  have  not  been  de- 
stroyed, or  have  been  rebuilt,  they  have  again  been  inhab- 
ited ;  as  we  see  in  the  cases  of  Rome,  Constantinople,  Jeru- 
salem, and  many  others.  But  on  the  cities  of  Israel  it  was 
written  that  God's  curse  should  go  forth  "  till  the  cities 
should  be  wasted  without  inhabitant,  and  the  houses  with- 
out man,  and  the  land  be  left  utterly  desolate."  But  for  a 
long  time  the  literal  fulfillment  of  this  prediction  was  not 
witnessed,  as  the  cities  on  this  side  the  Jordan  had  been 
mostly  reduced  to  ruins.  The  richest  and  most  populous 
part  of  the  land,  however,  was  the  land  of  Bashan ;  where, 
in  a  territory  of  about  thirty  miles  by  twenty,  sixty  cities 
still  remain  standing  to  attest  the  wonderful  fertility  of  the 
soil  and  industry  of  the  people.  "And  though  the  vast 
majority  of  them  are  deserted,  they  are  not  ruined.  *  *  >!« 
Many  of  the  houses  in  the  ancient  cities  of  Bashan  are  per- 
fect, as  if  only  finished  yesterday.  The  walls  are  sound,  the 
roofs  unbroken,  the  doors,  and  even  the  window  shutters  in 
their  places."*  From  two  hundred  to  five  hundred  houses 
have  been  found  perfect  in  some  of  these  cities ;  and  from 
the  roof  of  the  Castle  of  Salcah,  Dr.  Porter  counted  thirty 
towns  and  villages  dotting  the  plain,  many  of  them  perfect 
as  when  first  built;  "yet  for  more  than  five  centuries  there 
has  not  been  an  inhabitant  in  one  of  them."  So  sure  is 
every  word  of  God. 

Take  another  instance  of  preservation,  so  remarkable 
amid  the  surrounding  destruction,  that  it  arrested  the  atten- 
tion and  admiration  of  the  author  of  the  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  skeptic  and  scoffer  though  he  was. 

The  seven  churches  of  seven  of  the  most  considerable 

*  Porter's  Giant  Cities  of  Bashan,  passim. 


252  PROPHECY. 

cities  of  Asia  were  then,  as  the  churches  of  Christ  still  are, 
the  salt  of  the  earth.  Ten  righteous  men  would  have 
averted  God's  judgments  from  Sodom.  Jesus  pronounced 
the  sentences  of  these  churches  seventeen  hundred  and 
sixty  years  ago,  and  the  present  condition  of  the  cities  at- 
tests the  divine  authority  of  the  record  containing  them. 
They  are  various  and  specific.  Three  were  to  be  utterly  de- 
stroyed. Against  two  no  special  threatening  is  denounced. 
To  the  remaining  two  promises  of  life  and  blessing  are  given. 

Ephesus,  famous  for  its  magnificence,  the  busy  avenue  of 
travel,  the  seat  of  the  temple  of  Diana,  long  the  residence 
of  an  apostle,  and  afterward  of  Christian  bishops — "  one  of 
the  eyes  of  Asia" — as  it  stood  first  on  the  roll  of  cities, 
first  receives  the  doom  of  abused  privileges :  "/  will  remove 
thy  candlestick  out  of  its  place,  unless  thou  repent ^ 

Says  Gibbon :  "  The  captivity  and  ruin  of  the  seven 
churches  of  Asia  was  consummated  (by  the  Ottomans)  A. 
D.  1312 ;  and  the  barbarous  lords  of  Ionia  and  Lydia  still 
trample  on  the  monuments  of  classic  and  Christian  antiquity. 
In  the  loss  of  Ephesus  the  Christians  deplored  the  fall  of 
the  first  angel,  and  the  extinction  of  the  first  candlestick  of 
the  Revelation.  The  desolation  is  complete^  and  the  temple 
of  Diana  or  the  church  of  Mary  will  equally  elude  the 
search  of  the  curious  traveler."* 

Since  Gibbon's  day  the  foundations  of  the  temple  have 
been  discovered  twelve  to  fourteen  feet  below  the  soil ;  but 
no  church  of  Christ  remains  to  illuminate  the  minds  of  the 
few  squalid  and  lazy  dwellers  in  the  village  of  Aisayalouk. 
One  cobbler's  stall  represented  the  whole  manufacturing 
industry  of  Ephesus;  and  four  boys  playing  a  game  like 
drafts,  with  pebbles,  in  front  of  it  seemed  the  only  public 
likely  to  patronize  its  theater,  as  I  took  note  of  its  people 
and  their  occupations,  in  1872.     Then  leaving  the  storks 


Decline  and  Fall,  cbap.  Ixiv. 


PROPHECY.  253 

in  their  nests,  on  the  top  of  the  ruined  arches  of  its  great 
aqueduct,  to  proceed  toward  the  ruins  of  the  great  theater, 
we  tried  in  vain  to  procure  horses  or  asses  for  the  ladies ; 
found  the  only  road  so  filled  with  water  from  the  recent 
rains  as  to  be  impassable,  and  were  fain  to  plunge  on  foot 
through  the  plowed  fields  till  we  reached  the  elevation  on 
which  it  was  erected.  Here  we  surveyed  its  rock-hewn 
seats,  capable  of  accommodating  an  audience  larger  than 
that  of  all  the  theaters  of  New  York;  but  there  was  no 
longer  a  voice  to  cry,  "  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians!" 
The  sea  has  forsaken  the  harbor,  which  is  now  a  pestilen- 
tial morass.  "We  passed  through  the  ruins  of  the  custom- 
house, now  miles  inland,  and  found  a  single  Turkish  soldier 
on  guard.  The  peasants  who  cultivate  some  parts  of  the 
plain  come  from  distant  villages,  and  fever,  filth,  and  beg- 
gary reign  in  Ephesus. 

Had  the  twenty  thousand  patrons  of  the  drama,  in  the  thir- 
ty-one theaters  of  New  York,  honored  the  theater  of  Laodi- 
cea  with  their  presence,  its  polite  citizens  would  have  aocom- 
modated  them  all  on  the  reserved  seats,  retiring  themselves 
to  ten  thousand  less  commodious  sittings,  and  to  two  less 
gigantic  theaters.  While  yet  busy  in  the  erection  of  their 
splendid  places  of  public  amusement,  Jesus  said,  "/  lolll 
spew  thee  out  of  mi/  mouth  "  ''  The  circus,  and  three  stately 
theaters  of  Laodicea,  are  peopled  with  wolves  and  foxes," 
says  Gibbon. 

The  church  was  spewed  out  of  Christ's  mouth,  and  the 
city  too.  It  has  been  overturned  by  earthquakes,  and  is 
now  nothing  but  a  scries  of  magnificent  ruins,  from  which, 
however,  ample  evidence  may  be  collected  of  its  former 
magnificence.  Those  of  the  aqueduct,  the  theater,  and  the 
amphitheater,  are  remarkable;  in  the  latter  an  inscription 
has  been  found  showing  that  it  was  in  course  of  erection 
when  the  Lord  dictated  the  warning  to  its  people.  But  the 
warning  was  unheeded,  and  now  the  whole  space  inside  the 


254  PROPHECY. 

city  walls  is  strewn  with  fragments  of  columns  and  pedes- 
tals. 

A  Lydian  capitalist  once  deposited  in  the  vaults  of  Sardis 
more  specie  than  is  now  in  circulation  in  this  whole  conti- 
nent. Hut  J esua  ssiid,  "Thou  hast  a  name  that  thou  livest 
and  art  dead.  If^  therefore,  thou  shalt  not  watch,  I  will 
come  upon  thee  as  a  thief,  and  thou  shalt  not  know  what  hour 
I  will  come  upon  thee^ 

"Sardis,"  says  Gribbon,  "is  a  miserable  village."  A  later 
writer  (Durbin)  tells  us  that  the  Turks  say,  "Every  one 
who  builds  a  house  in  Sardis  dies  soon,  and  avoid  the  spot." 
Arundell,  in  his  account  of  his  visit  to  the  seven  churches, 
says:  "If  I  were  asked  what  impresses  the  mind  most 
strongly  on  beholding  Sardis,  I  should  say,  its  indescribable 
solitude,  like  the  darkness  of  Egypt,  that  could  be  felt.  So 
deep  the  solitude  of  the  spot,  once  the  lady  of  kingdoms, 
produces  a  feeling  of  desolate  abandonment  in  the  mind 
which  can  never  be  forgotten."  Connect  this*  feeling  with 
the  message  of  the  Apocalypse  to  the  church  of  Sardis, 
"Thou  hast  a  name  that  thou  livest,  and  art  dead,  and  then 
look  around  and  ask,  Where  are  the  churches?  Where  are 
the  Christians  of  Sardis?  The  tumuli  beyond  the  Hermus 
reply,  ^All  dea(^!' — suffering  the  infliction  of  the  threat- 
ened judgment  of  God  for  the  abuse  of  their  privileges. 
Let  the  unbeliever,  then,  be  asked.  Is  there  no  truth  in 
prophecy? — no  reality  in  religion?" 

Only  twenty-seven  miles  north  of  this  desolate  metrop- 
olis, the  manufactories  of  Thyatira  dispatch  weekly  to 
Smyrna,  cloths,  as  famous  over  Asia  for  the  brilliancy  and 
durability  of  their  hues  as  those  which  Lydia  displayed  to 
the  admiration  of  the  ladies  of  Philippi.  Two  thousand 
two  hundred  Grreek  Christians,  two  hundred  Armenian,  and 
a  Protestant  Church  under  the  care  of  the  missionaries  of 
the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  of  Foreign  Missions, 
assemble  every  Sabbath  to  commemorate  the  resurrection  of 


PROPHECY.      •  255 

Him  who  said  to  tlie  church  of  Thyatira:  ^^ I  will  put  upon 
you  no  other  burden;  hut  that  which  ye  have  already  hold 
fast  till  I  come." 

The  fragrant  citron  (Bergamot)  still  flourishes  around  the 
birthplace  of  Gralen ;  but  the  ruins  of  the  famous  library  of 
200,000  manuscripts  are  far  less  durable  memorials  of  the  city 
of  booksellers  than  those  beautifully  dressed  skins,  which, 
taking  their  name  (^Pergamena)  from  the  place  of  their  man- 
ufa?ture,  will  preserve  the  name  and  fame  of  Pergamos  as 
long  as  parchment  can  preserve  man's  memorials,  or  Grod's 
predictions.  Though  famous  for  fragrance,  physic,  and 
philosophy,  Pergamos  was  infamous  for  idolatry,  licentious- 
ness, and  persecution;  yet  still  endeared  to  Jesus  as  the 
scene  of  the  martyrdom  of  faithful  Antipas,  and,  the  dwell- 
ing-place of  a  hidden  church;  and  widely  different  sen- 
tences are  recorded  against  those  opposite  classes.  The 
public  memorials  are  to  perish,  but  the  hidden  word  to  en- 
dure. "The  fanes  of  Jupiter  and  Diana,  and  Venus  and 
Esculapius  (worshiped  under  the  symbol  of  a  live  snake), 
were  prostrate  in  the  dust,  and  where  they  had  not  been 
carried  away  by  the  Turks  to  cut  up  into  tombstones  or 
pounded  into  mortar,  the  Corinthian  columns  and  the  Ionic, 
the  splendid  capitals,  the  cornices  and  the  pediments,  all  in 
the  highest  ornament,  were  thrown  in  unsightly  heaps,"* 
is  the  comment  on  the  threatening  of  Jesus,  '^I  will  fight 
against  them — the  idolaters — with  the  sword  of  my  mouth  " 
The  3,000  Greek  and  300  Armenian  Christians,  and  even 
the  10,000  Turkish  inhabitants  of  the  modern  Pergamos, 
have  received  hundreds  of  copies  of  the  promise,  "  To  him 
that  overcometh  will  I  give  to  eat  of  the  hidden  mamia,  and 
will  give  him  a  white  stone  and  in  the  stone  a  new  name  writ- 
ten, which  no  man  knoweth,  saving  ha  that  receiveth  if."  But 
whether  the  hidden  church  of  Pergamos  shine  forth  or  not, 


*  Macfarlane's  Seven  Apocalyptic  Churches. 


256  .       PROPHECY. 

Gibbon  was  inaccurate  in  stating,  in  the  face  of  facts,  that 
"  the  god  of  Mohammed  without  a  rival  is  invoked  in  the 
mosques  of  Pergamos  and  Thjatira."  God's  providence  is 
as  discriminating  as  his  prophecy,  though  unbelief  may 
overlook  both. 

We  have  noted  here  instances  of  the  prediction  of  re- 
markable destruction  to  Sardis,  Ephesus,  and  Laodicea;  of 
continued  existence  to  Pergamos  and  Thyatira;  let  us  now 
note  a  prediction  of  remarkable  escape  and  preservation 
from  the  universal  doom.  If  it  requires  no  inspiration  to 
prophecy  destruction — the  universal  fate  of  humanity,  ac- 
cording to  the  Infidel — surely  it  requires  more  than  human 
skill  to  say  that  any  city  shall  escape  this  universal  fate,  and 
more  than  human  power  to  avert  this  destruction.  Of  Phil- 
adelphia, but  twenty- five  miles  distant  from  the  ruins  of 
Sardis,  Jesus  said,  and  the  Bible  records  the  prophecy :  "/ 
know  thy  works:  hcJiold,  I  have  set  before  thee  an  open  door^ 
and  no  man  can  shut  it :  for  thou  hast  a  little  strength,  and 
hast  kept  my  word,  and  hast  not  denied  my  name.  BcJiold, 
J  will  make  tliem  of  the  synagogue  of  Satan,  which  say  they 
are  Jews,  and  are  not,  hut  do  lie;  behold,  I  will  m,ake  them 
to  come  and  worship  before  thy  feet,  and  to  know  that  I  have 
loved  thee.  Because  thou  hast  kept  the  word  of  my  patience, 
J  will  also  keep  thee  from  the  hour  of  temptation,  which 
shall  come  upon  all  the  world,  to  try  them  that  dwell  upon 
the  earth.  Behold,  I  come  quickly:  hold  that  fa^t  which 
thou  hast,  that  no  man  take  thy  crown  Him  that  over  Com- 
eth will  I  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  my  God;  and  he 
shall  go  no  more  out:  and  I  will  write  upon  him  the  name 
of  my  God,  and  the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God,  which  is 
New  Jerusalem,  which  cometh  down  out  of  heaven  from  my 
God:  and  I  will  write  upon  him  my  new  name.^^ 

"Philadelphia  alone,"  says  Gibbon,  "has  been  saved  by 
prophecy,  or  courage.  At  a  distance  from  the  sea,  forgot- 
ten by  the  emperors,  encompassed  on  all  sides  by  the  Turks, 


PROPHECY.  257 

her  valiant  sons  defended  their  religion  and  their  freedom 
alone  for  fourscore  years,  and  at  length  capitulated  with  the 
proudest  of  the  Ottomans.  Among  the  Greek  colonies  and 
churches  of  Asia,  Philadelphia  is  still  erect — a  column  in  a 
scene  of  ruins — a  pleasing  example  that  the  paths  of  honor 
and  safety  may  be  the  same." 

In  the  pages  of  this  eloquent  writer  it  would  be  hard  to 
discover  another  instance  of  unqualified  hearty  commenda- 
tion of  soldiers  or  sufferers  for  Christianity  and  liberty,  such 
as  Gibbon  here  bestows  on  Philadelphia's  valiant  sons.  But 
it  was  written,  "I  will  make  them  com,e  and  worship  before 
thy  feet,'^  and  the  skeptic  and  scoffer  must  fulfill  the  word 
of  Jesus ;  even  as  the  unbelieving  Mohammedan  also  does, 
when  he  writes  upon  it  the  modern  name,  Allah  Sehr  —  The 
City  of  God  A  majestic  solitary  pillar,  of  high  antiquity, 
arrests  the  eye  of  the  traveler,  and  reminds  the  worshipers 
in  the  six  modern  churches  of  Philadelphia  of  the  beauty 
and  faithfulness  of  the  prophetic  symbol.  Heaven  and 
earth  shall  pass  away,  but  Jesus'  word  shall  not  pass  away. 

Improbable  to  human  sagacity  as  this  preservation  must 
have  seemed,  the  resurrection  of  a  fallen  city  is  more  ut- 
terly beyond  man's  vision.  In  the  Bible,  however,  tribula- 
tion and  recovery  were  foretold  to  Smyrna:  '■'■Fear  none  of 
those  things  which  thou  shalt  suffer:  behold,  the  devil  shall 
cast  some  of  you  into  prison  that  ye  may  be  tried;  and  ye 
shall  have  tribulation  ten  days.  Be  thou  faithful  unto  death, 
and  I  will  give  thee  a  crown  of  lifer  "The  populousness 
of  Smyrna  is  owing  to  the  foreign  trade  of  the  Franks  and 
Armenians,"  says  the  scoffer.  No  matter  to  what  it  is  ow- 
ing, he  who  dictated  the  Bible  foresaw  it,  and  made  no 
mistake  in  foretelling  it.  Says  Arundell:  This,  the  other 
eye  of  Asia,  is  still  a  very  flourishing  commercial  city,  one 
of  the  very  first  in  the  present  Turkish  empire  in  wealth 
and  population,  containing  130,000  inhabitants.  The  con- 
17 


258  PROPHECY. 

tinned  importance  of  Smyrna  may  be  estimated  from  the 
fact  that  it  is  the  seat  of  a  consul  from  every  nation  in 
Europe.  The  prosperity  of  Smyrna  is  now  rather  on  the 
increase  than  the  decline,  and  the  houses  of  painted  wood, 
which  were  most  unworthy  of  its  ancient  fame  and  present 
importance,  are  rapidly  giving  way  to  palaces  of  stone  ris- 
ing in  all  directions;  and,  probably,  ere  many  years  have 
passed,  the  modern  town  may  not  unworthily  represent  the 
ancient  city,  which  the  ancients  delighted  to  call  the  crown 
of  Ionia.  Commercial  activity  and  architectural  beauty, 
however,  are  but  a  small  part  of  the  glorious  destiny  of  the 
community  to  which  Jesus  says,  "  I  will  give  thee  a  crown 
of  life." 

Mark  Twain  suggests  that  the  prophecy  refers  to  the 
church,  rather  than  to  the  city;  but  forgets  to  remind  us 
that  the  Church  of  Christ  is  well  represented  and  crowned 
with  life  in  Smyrna.  God's  predictions  regard  the  vital  part 
of  communities,  the  spiritual  forces ;  these,  vigorous  and  out- 
spreading, secure  the  material  progress.  Close  the  Bible 
House,  printing  presses,  and  schools  of  America,  and  real 
estate  would  not  be  worth  much  more  than  in  Asia.  The 
Lord  Christ  rules  this  world.  His  blessing  has  revived  both 
the  church  and  the  city  of  Smyrna,  according  to  his  prom- 
ise. In  1872  I  found  its  harbor  busy  with  coasting  craft 
and  ocean  steamers,  and  its  railroad  doing  a  brisk  business. 
Smyrna  is  a  live  city. 

Deliverance  from  the  curse  of  sin,  and  communion  with 
the  Lord  of  Life,  alone  can  secure  either  a  nation's  or  an 
individual's  immortality.  Smyrna  possesses  the  gospel  of 
salvation.  Several  devoted  English  and  American  mission- 
aries proclaim  salvation  to  its  citizens.  From  its  printing 
presses  thousands  of  copies  of  the  Word  of  Life  issue  to  all 
the  various  populations  of  the  Turkish  Empire.  A  living 
Church  of  Christ  in  Smyrna  holds  forth,  for  the  acceptance 
of  the  dying  nations  around  her,  that  crown  of  life  prom- 


JPROPHECY.  259 

iscd  and  granted  by  the  Word  of  God,  not  to  her  only,  but 
to  all  who  love  his  appearing  and  his  kingdom. 

5,  This  is  the  grand  distinction  of  Grod's  word  of  proph- 
ecy, that  it  is  the  Word  of  Life.  It  is  the  only  word  which 
promises  life,  the  only  word  which  bestows  it  on  fallen  hu- 
manity. Recognizing  no  inevitable  law  of  destruction  but 
the  sentence  of  God,  no  invariable  law  of  nature  superior 
to  the  counsel  of  Jehovah,  nor  any  progress  of  events  which 
his  Almighty  arm  can  not  arrest  and  reverse,  it  points  a  de- 
spairing world  to  sin  as  the  cause  of  all  destruction,  to  Satan 
as  the  author  of  sin,  to  ungodly  men  in  league  with  him  as 
the  foes  of  God  and  man,  and  to  Christ  pledged  to  perpetual 
warfare  with  such  until  the  last  enemy  be  destroyed.  This 
word  of  prophecy  tells  us,  that  the  battle-fields  Messiah  has 
won  are  earnests  of  that  great  victory ;  points  to  the  col- 
umns which  he  has  preserved  erect  amid  scenes  of  ruin,  as 
assurances  that  he  is  able  to  save  to  the  uttermost  all  that 
come  unto  God  by  him ;  goes  to  the  graveyards  where  fallen 
Smyrnas,  idolatrous  Saxons,  debased  Sandwich  Islanders, 
and  cannibal  New  Zealanders  have  buried  the  image  of  the 
living  God,  and  in  Jesus'  name  proclaims,  "/  am  the  resur- 
rection and  the  life:  he  that  helieveth  in  me,  though  he  were 
dead,  yet  shall  he  live;^^  and,  amid  the  very  ruins  of  de- 
stroyed cities,  and  the  crumbling  heaps  of  their  perished 
memorials,  beholds  the  assurances  that  Satan's  rule  of  ruin 
shall  not  be  perpetual,  anticipates  the  day  when  the  course 
of  sin  and  misery  shall  be  reversed,  and  teaches  Adam's 
sons  to  face  the  foe,  and  chant  forth  that  heaven-born  note 
of  victorious  faith,  "0^,  thou  enemy!  destructions  are  come 
to  a  perpetual  end." 

Come  forth,  trembling  skeptic,  from  the  cave  of  thy  dark 
invariable  experience  of  death  and  destruction,  and  from 
the  vain  sparks  of  thy  misgiving  hopes  of  an  ungodly  eter- 
nity to  come  less  miserable  than  the  past,  and  lift  thine  eyes 
to  this  heavenly  sunrising  on  the  dark  mountain  tops  of 


PROPHECY. 

futurity,  tlie  like  of  which  thou  didst  never  dream  of  in  all 
thy  Pantheistic  reveries.  Search  over  all  the  religions  of 
the  world — the  hieroglyphics  of  Egypt,  the  arrow-headed 
inscriptions  of  Assyria,  the  classic  mythologies  of  graceful 
Greece  and  iron  Rome,  the  monstrous  shasters  of  thine 
Indian  Pundits,  or  the  more  chaotic  clouds  of  thy  German 
philosophies — in  none  of  them  wilt  thou  ever  find  this 
divine  thought,  an  end  of  destructions — a  perpetual  end. 
Cycles  of  ruin  and  renovation,  and  of  renovation  and  ruin, 
vast  cycles,  if  you  will,  but  evermore  ending  in  dire  catas- 
trophies  to  gods  and  men — an  everlasting  succession  of  death 
and  destructions — is  the  fearful  vista  which  all  the  religions 
of  man,  and  thine  own  irreligion,  present  to  thy  terrified 
vision.  But  thou  wast  created  in  the  image  of  the  living 
God,  and  durst  not  rest  satisfied  with  any  such  prospect. 
Now  I  come  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  to  tell  thee,  that 
"  God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  begotten 
Son,  that  whosoever  believeth  on  him  should  not  perish,  but 
have  everlasting  life;"  and  I  demand  of  thee  that  thou  ac- 
knowledge this  promise  of  life  everlasting  to  be  the  word 
of  that  living  God,  and  to  show  cause,  if  any  thou  hast, 
why  thou  dost  relinquish  thy  birthright,  and  spurn  the 
gift  of  everlasting  life  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord? 

But,  if  thou  hast  no  suflScient  cause  why  thou  shouldest 
choose  death  rather  than  life,  then  hear,  and  your  soul  shall 
live,  while  I  relate  the  promise  which  God  hath  made  of  old 
to  our  fathers,  and  hath  fulfilled  to  us,  their  children,  by 
raising  up  his  Son,  Jesus  Christ,  from  the  dead,  and  send- 
ing him  to  bless  you,  by  turning  away  every  one  of  you  from 
your  iniquities.  For  there  can  be  no  deliverance  from  mis- 
ery and  destruction  but  by  means  of  delivery  from  sin  and 
Satan. 

It  is  quite  in  agreement  with  the  manner  of  our  deliver- 
ance from  any  of  the  evils  of  our  fallen  condition,  that  our 
deliverance  from  the  power  of  sin  and  Satan  be  effected  by 


PROPHECY.  261 

the  agency  of  a  deliverer.  Oiir  ignorance  is  removed  by 
the  knowledge  of  a  teacher,  our  sickness  by  the  skill  of  a 
physician,  the  oppressed  nation  hails  the  advent  of  a  pa- 
triotic leader,  and  oppressed  humanity  acknowledges  the 
fitness  and  need  of  a  divine  Deliverer,  even  by  the  reacly 
welcome  it  has  given  to  pretenders  to  this  character,  and  by 
the  longing  desire  of  the  wisest  and  best  of  men  for  a  divinely 
commissioned  Savior ;  a  desire  implanted  by  the  great  proph- 
ecy, which  stands  at  the  portal  of  hope  for  mankind,  in  the 
very  earliest  period  of  our  history,  that  "<A-e  seed  of  the 
woman  should  bruise  the  serpent's  head,"  and  so  leave  man 
triumphant  over  the  great  destroyer. 

The  prophecies  regarding  the  Messiah  are  so  numerous, 
pointed,  various,  and  improbable,  as  to  set  human  sagacity 
utterly  at  defiance ;  while  they  are  also  connected  so  as  to 
form  a  scheme  of  prophecy,  which  gradually  unrolls  before 
us  the  advent,  the  ministry,  the  death,  resurrection,  and  as- 
cension of  the  Lord,  the  progress  of  his  gospel  over  all  the 
world,  and  the  blessed  elFects  it  should  produce  on  individ- 
uals, families,  and  nations.  It  closes  with  a  view  of  the 
second  coming  of  Jesus  to  conquer  the  last  of  his  enemies, 
and  take  possession  of  the  earth  as  his  inheritance.  I  can 
only  lop  off  a  twig  or  two  from  this  blessed  tree  of  life,  in 
the  hope  that  the  fragrance  of  the  leaves  may  allure  you  to 
take  up  the  Bible,  and  eat  abundantly  of  its  life-giving 
promises.  As  I  have  in  the  previous  chapters  abundantly 
proved  the  veracity  of  the  New  Testament  history,  I  shall 
now  with  all  confidence  refer  to  its  account  of  the  birth, 
life,  and  death  of  Jesus,  as  illustrating  the  prophecies. 

The  time,  the  place,  the  manner  of  his  birth,  his  parent- 
age and  reception,  were  plainly  declared,  hundreds  of  years 
before  he  appeared. 

When  Herod  had  gathered  all  the  chief  priests  and 
scribes  of  the  people  together,  he  demanded  of  them  where 
Christ  should  be  born,  and  they  said  unto  him,  "  In  Beth- 


262  PROPHECY. 

lehera  of  Judea,  for  thus  it  is  written  by  the  prophet :  And 
iJiou  Bethlehem,  in  the  land  of  Judah,  art  not  the  least 
among  the  princes  of  Judah:  for  out  of  thee  shall  come  a 
Governor,  that  shall  rule  my  people  Israel'^  The  first  verse 
of  this  chapter  records  the  fact,  "  Now  when  Jesus  was  born 
in  Bethlehem  of  Judea." 

The  throne  of  Judah  was  to  be  occupied  by  strangers, 
and  the  line  of  native  princes  was  to  cease  upon  the  coming 
of  this  Governor,  and  not  till  his  coming:  ^^ The  scepter  shall 
not  depart  from  Judah,  nor  a  lawgiver  from  between  his 
feet,  until  Shiloh  shall  come;  and  unto  him  shall  the  gath- 
ering of  the  people  be."  On  the  day  of  his  crucifixion  the 
rulers  of  the  Jews  made  this  formal  and  public  announce- 
ment of  the  fact,  "We  have  no  king  but  Caesar." 

He  was  to  address  a  class  of  people  whom  no  other  relig- 
ious teacher  had  condescended  to  notice  before,  and  very 
few  save  those  sent  by  Him  ever  since :  "  The  Spirit  of  the 
Lord  God  is  upon  me;  because  the  Lord  hath  anointed  me 
to  preach  good  tidings  unto  the  meek :  he  hath  sent  me  to  bind 
up  the  broken-hearted,  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captives,  and 
the  opening  of  the  prison  to  them  that  are  bound."  Hear 
Jesus'  words :  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are 
heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.  Go  and  show  John 
again  those  things  which  ye  do  hear  and  see :  The  blind  re- 
ceive their  sight,  and  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed, 
and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are  raised  up,  and  the  poor  have 
the  gospel  preached  to  them.  And  blessed  is  he,  whosoever 
shall  not  be  offended  in  me." 

Yet,  notwithstanding  his  feeding  of  thousands,  and  heal- 
ing of  multitudes,  and  teaching  of  the  lowest  of  the  people, 
it  was  foretold  he  should  be  unpopular  :  "//e  is  despised  and 
rejected  of  men;  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with 
grief:  and  we  hid  as  it  were  our  faces  from  him ;  he  was 
despised,  and  we  esteemed  him  not."  The  brief  records  are : 
"  Then  all  the  disciples  forsook  him  and  fled."     "  Then  be- 


PROpnECY.  263 

,^an  Peter  to  curse  and  to  swear,  saying,  I  know  not  the 
man."  "  Pilate  saitli  unto  them,  Ye  have  a  custom,  that  I 
should  release  unto  you  one  at  the  passover :  will  ye  there- 
fore that  I  release  unto  you  the  King  of  the  Jews  ?  Then 
cried  they  all  again,  saying,  Not  this  man,  but  Barabbas. 
Now  Barabbas  was  a  robber." 

All  the  prophets  agree  in  predicting  that  for  the  sins  of 
his  people,  and  to  atone  for  their  guilt,  he  should  be  put  to 
death  by  a  shameful  public  execution  :  ^^In  the  midst  of  the 
week  3Iessiah  shall  be  cut  off,  but  not  for  himself  He  was 
ivounded  for  our  transgressions,  he  was  bruised  for  our  ini- 
quities :  the  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  iipon  him ;  and 
with  his  stripes  we  are  healed.  He  was  numbered  with  the 
transgressors  ;  and  he  bare  the  sin  of  many,  and  made  inter- 
cession for  the  transgressors.  They  pierced  my  hands  and 
my  feet."  The  record  says :  "  The  Son  of  Man  came  not 
to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his  life 
a  ransom  for  many."  "And  when  they  were  come  to  the  place 
which  is  called  Calvary,  there  they  crucified  him,  and  the 
malefactors,  one  on  the  right  hand,  and  the  other  on  the 
left.  Then  said  Jesus,  Father,  forgive  them;  for  they  know 
not  what  they  do  " 

The  one  grand  unparalleled  fact,  one  which  demands  the 
hope  of  dying  men  for  a  victory  over  the  great  destroyer, 
and  a  resurrection  from  the  tomb — the  fact  that  one  man 
born  of  a  woman  died,  and  did  not  see  corruption,  but  rose 
again  from  the  dead  and  went  up  into  heaven,  and  dieth  no 
more — forms  the  theme  of  many  a  prophetic  psalm  of  tri- 
umph:  ^^Thou  loilt  not  leave  my  soul  in  hell,  nor  wilt  thou 
give  thine  Holy  One  to  see  corruption  Thou  wilt  show  me 
the  path  of  life.  Thou  wilt  make  me  full  of  joy  with  thy 
countenance.  Thou  hast  ascended  on  high.  Thou  hast  led 
captivity  captive."  Often  did  Jesus  predict  this  prodigy 
before  friend  and  foe  :  "Sir,  we  remember  that  that  deceiver 
said,  when  he  was  yet  alive,  After  three  days  I  will  rise  again." 


264  PROPHECY. 

The  last  chapters  of  the  gospels  relate  the  proofs  by  which 
he  convinced  his  incredulous  disciples  that  the  prophecy 
was  fulfilled  :  "  Behold  my  hands  and  my  feet,  that  it  is  I 
myself.  Handle  me  and  see,  for  a  spirit  hath  not  flesh  and 
bones,  as  ye  see  me  have.  And  when  he  had  thus  spoken, 
he  showed  them  his  hands  and  his  feet.  And  while  they 
yet  believed  not  for  joy,  and  wondered,  he  saith  unto  them, 
Have  ye  here  any  meat  ?  And  they  gave  him  a  piece  of 
broiled  fish,  and  of  an  honey  comb.  And  he  took  it  and 
did  eat  before  them ;  and  said  unto  them,  Thus  it  is  writ- 
ten, and  thus  it  behooved  Christ  to  sufi'er,  and  to  rise  from 
the  dead  the  third  day;  and  that  repentance  and  remission 
of  sins  should  be  preached  in  his  name  among  all  nations, 
beginning  at  Jerusalem.  And  ye  are  witnesses  of  these 
things.  And  behold  I  send  the  promise  of  my  Father  upon 
you,  but  tarry  ye  in  the  city  of  Jerusalem  until  ye  be  en- 
dued with  power  from  on  high.  And  he  led  them  out  as  far 
as  to  Bethany,  and  he  lifted  up  his  hands  and  blessed  them. 
And  while  he  was  blessing  them  he  was  parted  from  them, 
and  carried  up  into  heaven.  And  while  they  looked  stead- 
fastly toward  heaven,  as  he  went  up,  behold  two  men  stood 
by  them  in  white  apparel,  which  said.  Ye  men  of  Galilee, 
why  stand  ye  gazing  up  into  heaven?  This  same  Jesus, 
which  is  taken  up  from  you  into  heaven,  shall  so  come  in 
like  manner  as  ye  have  seen  him  go  into  heaven." 

With  your  own  eyes  you  shall  see  the  fulfillment  of  this 
prophecy.  Every  eye  shall  see  him.  The  clouds  of  heaven 
shall  then  reveal  the  vision  now  sketched  on  the  page  of 
revelation  :  "And  I  saw  a  great  white  throne,  and  Him  that 
sat  on  it,  from  whose  face  the  earth  and  the  heaven  fled 
away,  and  there  was  found  no  place  for  them.  And  I  saw 
the  dead,  small  and  great,  stand  before  God ;  and  the  books 
were  opened ;  and  another  book  was  opened,  which  is  the 
Book  of  Life  ;  and  the  dead  were  judged  out  of  those 
things  which  were  written  in  the  books,  according  to  their 


PROPHECY.  265 

works.  And  the  sea  gave  up  the  dead  which  were  in  it ; 
and  death  and  hell  delivered  up  the  dead  which  were  in 
them;  and  they  were  judged  every  man  according  to  their 
works.  And  death  and  hell  were  cast  into  the  lake  of  fire. 
This  is  the  second  death.  And  whosoever  was  not  found 
written  in  the  Book  of  Life  was  cast  into  the  lake  of  fire. 
And  I  saw  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth:  for  the  first 
heaven  and  the  first  earth  were  passed  away;  and  there  was 
no  more  sea.  And  I  John  saw  the  holy  city,  New  Jerusa- 
lem, coming  down  from  God,  out  of  heaven,  prepared  as  a 
bride  adorned  for  her  husband.  And  T  heard  a  great  voice 
out  of  heaven,  saying,  Behold  the  tabernacle  of  Grod  is  with 
men,  and  he  will  dwell  with  them,  and  they  shall  be  his 
people,  and  God  himself  shall  be  with  them,  and  be  their 
God.  And  God  shall  wipe  away  all  tears  from  their  eyes ; 
and  there  shall  be  no  more  death,  neither  sorrow  nor  crying : 
neither  shall  there  be  any  more  pain ;  for  the  former  things 
are  passed  away.  And  he  that  sat  upon  the  throne  said. 
Behold,  I  make  all  things  new.  And  he  said  unto  me, 
Write,  for  tuese  words  are  true  and  faithful." 


CHAPTER    IX. 


M.OSES     And    The    Prophets. 

In  tha  foregoing  chapters  we  have  found,  that  we  have 
great  need  of  God's  teaching;  that  he  has  sent  his  Son, 
Jesus  Christ,  to  show  us  the  way  of  life ;  that  the  gospel 
preached  by  him  and  his  apostles  has  proved  itself  the 
power  of  God,  by  saving  men  from  their  sins ;  and  that  this 
gospel  is  truly  recorded  in  the  New  Testament.  From  these 
facts,  already  settled,  we  proceed,  according  to  our  plan  of 
investigation,  to  examine  those  which  may  be  more  obscure ; 
to  examine  the  Old  Testament  by  the  light  of  the  New. 

The  great  majority  of  Jews  and  Christians  have  always 
believed,  that  the  world  was  in  as  great  need  of  God's  teach- 
ing before  the  coming  of  Christ  as  it  has  been  since ;  that 
God  did  put  his  words  into  the  mouths  of  certain  persons, 
called  prophets;  and  that  he  caused  them  to  tell  them  truly 
to  their  neighbors ;  that  he  enabled  these  prophets  to  make 
predictions  of  future  events  beyond  the  skill  of  man  to  cal- 
culate, and  to  do  miracles  which  the  power  of  man  could  not 
perform,  as  proofs  that  they  spake  the  Word  of  God;  that 
he  caused  them  truly  to  record  in  writing  a  great  many  of 
these  revelations,  and  so  much  of  the  history  of  the  times 
in  which,  and  of  the  people  to  whom,  they  were  given,  as 
was  needful  for  a  right  understanding  of  them ;  that  he  has 
so  managed  matters  since,  as  that  these  revelations  and  nar- 
ratives have  been  faithfully  preserved  in  the  books  of  the 
Old  Testament;  that  we  are  bound  to  believe  these  revela- 
tions t )  be  true,  not  because  we  can  otherwise  demonstrate 

(266) 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  267 

their  truth,  but  because  God,  who  can  not  lie,  has  declared 
it;  and  that  we  are  bound  to  do  the  things  they  command, 
not  merely  because  we  see  them  to  be  right,  but  because 
Grod  commands  us. 

It  is  needful  to  consider  the  divine  authority  of  the  Old 
Testament  distinctly  from  that  of  the  New,  not  only  because 
it  is  a  distinct  subject  in  itself,  and  because  our  plan  of  in- 
vestigation leads  us  backward  from  the  known  and  established 
fact  of  the  divine  authority  of  the  New  Testament  to  the 
discovery  or  disproof  of  the  like  character  in  the  Old;  but 
because  a  great  many  persons  admit,  in  words  at  least,  that 
Christ  was  a  teacher  sent  from  God,  who,  either  in  so  many 
words,  or  in  effect,  deny  the  divine  authority  of  the  Old 
Testament.  Some  of  the  modern  Rationalists  have  revived 
the  creed  of  the  Gnostics  of  the  first  century — that  the 
Hebrew  Jehovah  was  a  being  of  very  different  character 
from  the  Deity  revealed  by  Jesus  Christ.  They  will  extol 
to  the  skies  the  world-wide  benevolence,  compassion  and 
kindness  of  the  gospel  of  Christ,  in  contrast  with  the  al- 
leged national  pride,  bigotry,  and  exclusiveness  of  the  He- 
brew prophets.  Others  are  desirous  of  appearing  rem^y^ka- 
bly  candid  in  bestowing  on  the  Old  Testament  a  liberal  com- 
mendation as  a  collection  of  religious  tracts  of  merely 
human  origin,  and  of  various  degrees  of  merit;  some  of 
them  of  extraordinary  literary  excellence,  well  suited  to  the 
infancy  of  the  human  intellect,  and  highly  useful  in  their 
time  in  raising  men  from  fetichism  and  idolatry  to  the  wor- 
ship of  one  God ;  but  which,  containing  many  errors  along 
with  this  grand  truth,  have  been  set  aside  by  the  more 'per- 
fect teachings  of  Christ  and  his  apostles,  much  in  the  same 
way  as  the  old  Ptolemaic  astronomy  was  displaced  by  the 
discoveries  of  Newton.  Others  still  are  willing  to  acknowl- 
edge the  Old  Testament  as  inspired,  provided  we  will  allow 
Shake?!peare  and  the  Koran  to  be  inspired  also.  Besides 
all  these,  there  are  several  scores  of  scholars  anxious  to  con- 


268  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

ceal  its  nakedness  under  theories  of  inspiration  made  and 
trimmed  in  a  great  many  styles,  but  all  cut  from  the  same 
doctrine,  to-wit,  that  God  revealed  his  truth  aright  to  Moses 
and  the  prophets,  but  they  went  wrong  in  the  telling  of  it. 
Now,  all  these  notions  are  refuted  by  the  fact,  that  God  is 
the  Author  of  the  Bible 

When  we  say  that  God  is  the  Author  of  the  Bible,  and 
that  it  carries  with  it  a  divine  authority  because  it  is  the 
Word  of  God,  we  do  not  mean  that  God  is  the  Author  of 
every  saying  in  it,  and  that  every  sentiment  recorded  in  it 
is  God's  mind,  any  more  than  we  mean  to  make  D'Aubigne 
responsible  for  every  sentiment  of  priests,  popes  and  monks 
which  he  has  faithfully  recorded  in  his  History  of  the  Ref- 
ormation. On  the  contrary,  we  find,  in  the  very  beginning 
of  the  Bible,  a  very  full  expression  of  the  devil's  sentiments 
recorded  in  the  devil's  own  words —  Ye  shall  not  surely  die — 
and  they  are  not  one  whit  less  devilish  and  lying,  though 
recorded  in  the  Bible,  than  when  expounded  by  any  modern 
Universalist  preacher.  But  we  mean  that  it  is  very  true 
that  the  devil  was  the  preacher  of  that  first  Universalist 
sermon  :  and  that  God  thought  it  needful  to  let  mankind 
know  the  shape  of  the  doctrine,  the  character  of  the 
preacher,  and  the  consequences  of  listening  to  error ;  and 
therefore  directed  Moses  to  record  it  truly  for  the  informa- 
tion of  all  whom  it  may  concern.  So  there  are  many  other 
sayings  of  wicked  men,  and  even  of  good  men,  recorded  in 
the  Bible,  which  are  very  false ;  but  the  Bible  gives  a  true 
record  of  them,  by  God's  direction,  that  we  may  not  be  ig- 
norant of  Satan's  devices. 

Nor,  when  we  say  that  God  directed  the  prophets  what 
to  write,  and  how  to  write  it,  so  that  they  did  not  go  wrong 
in  "the  writing  of  his  word,  do  we  mean  that  he  also  so  guided 
every  piece  of  their  behavior,  as  that  they  never  went  wrong 
in  doing  their  own  actions;  nor  that  the  sins  of  the  saints, 
recorded  in  the  Bible,  are  anything  the  less  sinful  for  being 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  269 

recorded  there,  or  for  being  performed  by  men  who  ought 
to  have  known  better.  There  is  not  a  perfect  man  upon  the 
earth,  that  doeth  good,  and  sinneth  not.  If  the  Bible  had 
left  the  faults  of  its  writers  undiscovered  it  would  not  have 
been  a  true  history.  But  these  very  writers  of  the  Bible 
tell  us  their  own  transgressions,  under  the  direction  of  the 
Spirit  of  God;  a  thing  writers  in  general  are  very  shy 
about.  Moses  tells  us  how  he  spake  unadvisedly  with  his 
lips,  and  was  punished  for  it.  David's  penitential  psalms 
record  the  bitter  tears  he  wept  over  his  transgression  ;  tears 
which  could  not  wash  out  the  sentence  against  the  man  after 
God's  own  heart — the  sword  shall  never  depart  from  thy 
house.  An  overburdened  people,  a  rotten  court,  a  falling 
empire,  continual  strife,  a  family  of  scolding  women,  and  a 
foolish  son— might  have  been  considered  sufficient  marks  of 
God's  displeasure,  without  causing  the  wisest  of  men  to 
pen,  and  publish  to  the  world,  such  a  minute  record  of  his 
madness,  folly  and  misery,  as  we  find  in  Ecclesiastes.  But 
these  shipwrecked  mariners  were  divinely  directed  to  pile 
up  the  sad  memorials  of  their  errors  on  the  reefs  where 
they  were  wrecked,  as  beacons  of  warning  to  all  inexpe- 
rienced voyagers  on  life's  treacherous  sea.  The  light-house 
is  built  by  the  same  authority  as  the  custom-house,  and  is 
even  more  necessary. 

Now  let  us  take  note  of  the  objects  of  our  investigation. 
We  are  not  in  search  of  the  literary  beauty  or  poetic  inspi- 
ration of  the  Bible ;  but  we  inquire  by  what  right  does  it 
command  our  obedience?  Nor  are  we  about  to  inquire 
whether,  when  we  have  tried  the  Bible  at  the  tribunal  of 
our  reason,  we  shall  give  it  a  diploma  to  commend  it  to  the 
patronage  of  other  critics ;  but  whether  it  comes  to  us  at- 
tested by  such  evidence  of  being  the  Word  of  God,  that  our 
reason  shall  reverently  bow  down  before  it  as  a  higher  au- 
thority, and  seek  light  from  it  by  which  to  judge  of  all  spir- 
itual and  moral  matters. 


270  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

Attempts  are  continually  made  to  confuse  these  great 
questions,  by  concessions  of  the  literary  excellence  of  the 
Bible,  on  the  part  of  those  who  deny  its  divine  authority. 
For  instance,  one  of  the  modern  oracles  of  infidelity  says, 
and  his  admirers  incessantly  repeat  the  grand  discovery : 
"  The  writings  of  the  Prophets  contain  nothing  above  the 
reach  of  the  human  faculties.  Here  are  noble  and  spirit- 
stirring  appeals  to  men's  conscience,  patriotism,  honor  and 
religion ;  beautiful  poetic  descriptions,  odes,  hymns,  ex- 
pressions of  faith  almost  beyond  praise.  But  the  mark  of 
human  infirmity  is  on  them  all,  and  proofs  or  signs  of  mi- 
raculous inspiration  are  not  found  in  them."* 

But  what  do  the  toiling  millions  of  earth  care  about  beau- 
tiful poetic  descriptions  of  a  heaven  and  a  hell  that  have  no 
reality  ?  Or  what  does  it  signify  to  you  or  me,  reader,  that 
the  Bible  raises  its  head  far  above  the  other  cedars  of 
earthly  literature  ?  If  its  top  reaches  not  to  heaven,  can  it 
make  a  ladder  long  enough  to  carry  us  there  ?  The  Bible 
contains  predictions  beyond  the  reach  of  the  human  facul- 
ties, as  we  have  fully  proved.  These  predictions  at  least 
are  from  God,  and  have  no  mark  of  human  infirmity  on 
them. 

It  does  not  at  all  meet  this  question  to  grant  that  the 
Bible  is  inspired,  just  as  every  work  of  genius  is  inspired  ; 
nor  to  profess  that  they  believe  the  Bible  to  be  from  God, 
just  as  every  pure  and  holy  thought,  and  every  good  work, 
proceed  from  him.  When  the  assertors  of  the  divine  au- 
thority of  the  Bible  speak  of  it  as  inspired,  they  mean  that 
it  is  so  as  no  other  book  is ;  and  when  they  speak  of  it  as 
coming  from  God,  they  mean  that  it  does  not  come  simply 
as  a  gift  of  God's  bounty,  as  the  soldier's  land-warrant  comes 
from  the  government ;  but  that  it  comes  like  the  laws  of 


Parker's  Absolute  Religion,  p.  205. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  271 

Congress,  carrying  authority  with  it  to  command  our  obedi- 
ence. 

We  feel  no  interest  whatever  in  the  discussion  of  an  in- 
spiration, "  like  God's  omnipotence,  not  limited  to  the  few 
writers  claimed  by  the  Jews,  Christians  and  Mohammedans, 
but  as  extensive  as  the  race  ;  "-!^  or  perhaps  as  extensive 
as  all  creation,  and  leading  us  to  regard  even  "  the  solemn 
notes  of  the  screech  owl  "  as  inspired. f  What  manner  of 
use  could  the  Bible  be  to  an  ignorant  soul  groping  its  way 
to  truth  and  holiness,  or  to  a  dying  sinner  hastening  to  the 
judgment  seat  of  God,  if  it  were  true,  that  "thj  Bible's 
own  teaching  on  the  subject  is  that  everything  good  in  any 
book,  person  or  thing,  is  inspired  ?  Milton  and  Shakespeare, 
and  Bacon  and  the  Canticles,  the  Apocalypse  and  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,  and  the  Eighth  Chapter  of  the  Romans 
are  all  inspired.  How  much  inspiration  they  respectively 
contain  must  be  gathered  from  their  results. "| 

This  liberal  grant  of  inspiration,  alike  to  Moses  and  Mo- 
hammed, to  Christ  and  to  Shakespeare,  is  evidently  a  denial 
of  divine  authority  to  any  of  them.  If  Hamlet,  and  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  the  Koran,  are  all  of  a  like  di- 
vine authority,  or  all  alike  without  any,  it  is  merely  a  mat- 
ter of  taste  whether  I  worship  at  Niblo's  or  the  Tabe  naele, 
or  keep  a  harem  in  my  house  or  a  prayer-meeting.  Most 
men,  however,  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  Christ  and  Mo- 
hammed taught  exactly  the  same  religion,  or  that  the 
church  and  the  theater  are  precisely  equal  and  alike  in 
their  influences  on  the  heart  and  life ;  and  so  they  reject 
several  of  these  inspired  men,  and  cleave  to  the  one  they 
like  best.  Whereas,  if  this  theory  be  true,  they  ought 
not  to  act  in  such  a  disrespectful  way  toward  any  inspired 
man ;  but  ought  to  attend  the  church,  the  theater  and  the 


*  Parker's  Discourses  on  Religion,  p.  161. 

t  Macknight's  Doctrine  of  Inspiration,  p.  161,  and  seq. 

X  Macknight's  Doctrine  of  Inspiration,  p.  192,  etc. 


272  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS 

harem  with  equal  regularity,  and  serve  God,  Mammon  and 
Belial  with  equal  diligence. 

"Oh,"  it  is  replied,  "they  are  not  all  inspired  in  the  same 
degree.  It  does  not  follow  that  because  Byron,  and  Shakes- 
peare, and  Paul  are  all  inspired,  that  their  writings  will 
produce  exactly  the  same  results,  or  that  they  are  alike  suit- 
able for  every  constitution  and  temper.  How  much  inspi- 
ration they  severally  possess  .must  be  determined  by  their 
results.  The  tree  is  known  by  its  fruits ;  and  experience  is 
the  price  of  truth." 

But  truth  may  be  bought  too  dear.  I  am  sick  and  need 
some  medicine,  but  know  not  exactly  what  kind,  or  how 
much  to  take.  "Here,"  says  my  Rationalist  friend.,  "is  a 
whole  drug  store  for  you.  Every  drawer,  and  pot,  and  bot- 
tle is  full  of  medicine.  Help  yourself."  But,  my  good  sir, 
how  am  I  to  know  what  kind  will  suit  me?  There  are  poi- 
sons here,  as  well  as  medicines;  and  I  can  not  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  arsenic  and  calomel.  One  of  my  neighbors 
died  the  other  day  from  swallowing  oxalic  acid  instead  of 
Glauber's  salts.  Be  kind  enough  to  put  the  poisons  on  one 
shelf,  and  the  medicines  on  the  other,  or,  at  least,  to  label 
them,  so  that  I  may  know  which  to  choose  and  which  to 
refuse.  "Oh," says  my  Rationalist  friend,  "this  distinction 
between  medicines  and  poisons  is  all  an  antiquated,  vulgar 
prejudice.  What  you  call  poisons  are  really  medicines. 
Medical  virtue  is  not  confined  to  the  few  specifics  recognized 
by  the  Homeopathics,  the  Regular  Faculty,  or  the  Hydro- 
pathics, but  is  as  extensive  as  the  world.  Everything  on 
earth  has  a  medical  virtue;  but  how  much,  and  of  what 
sort,  must  be  determined  by  experience.  In  fact,  you  must 
try  for  yourself  whether  any  particular  drug  will  kill  you, 
or  cure  you.  So  here  is  the  whole  drug  store  to  begin  your 
cure  with."  A  valuable  gift,  truly!  "In  the  day  we  eat 
thereof,  our  eyes  will  be  opened,  and  we  shall  be  as  gods, 


MCSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  273 

knowing  good  and  evil."     I  think,  reader,  you  and  I  will 
let  somebody  else  try  that  experiment. 

"Why  should  men  throw  away  their  common  sense,  and 
swallow  everything  as  inspired?"  says  another  friend  of  the 
Rationalistic  school.  "Grod  has  given  us  reason  to  discern 
between  good  and  evil,  and  commanded  us  to  use  it.  Prove 
the  spirits,  whether  they  he  of  God.  I  spahe  as  to  wise  men. 
Judge  ye  what  I  say,  is  the  language  of  Scripture.  The 
right  of  private  judgment  is  the  inalienable  inheritance  of 
Protestants.  I  am  for  examining  the  Bible  according  to  the 
principles  of  reason  and  truth.  '  That  only  is  to  be  regarded 
as  true  and  valid  which  is  matter  of  personal  conviction.' 
The  Old  Testament  is  in  many  places  contrary  to  my  con- 
victions of  truth  and  reason.  I  find  that  it  consists  of  a 
great  variety  of  treatises  of  various  degrees  of  merit.  Even 
in  the  same  book  it  presents  often  strange  contrasts — sub- 
lime moral  precepts  on  one  page ;  on  the  next,  solemn  re- 
quirements of  frivolous  ceremonies,  utterly  unworthy  of 
God ;  or  solemn  narrations  of  miraculous  interferences  with 
the  established  course  of  nature,  which,  taken  literally,  are 
absolutely  incredible.  The  judicious  reader  must  therefore 
discriminate  between  those  divine  precepts  of  morality 
which  were  infused  into  the  minds  of  the  Hebrew  sages, 
and  those  Jewish  prejudices  which  their  education  and  char- 
acter inclined  them  to  regard  as  equally  important;  and  he 
must  divest  the  narrative  of  facts  as  they  actually  occurred, 
from  the  national  legends  and  traditions  which  the  compilers 
of  the  Pentateuch  added  to  adorn  the  history." 

This,  it  will  be  seen,  at  once  raises  another  and  very  im. 
portant  question,  namely:  By  what  standard  are  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Old  Testament  to  be  judged?  Or  rather  it 
settles  the  question  by  taking  it  for  granted,  that  every  in- 
quirer is  to  judge  them  according  to  his  own  notions  of 
reason  and  truth.     But  this  does  not  help  me  out  of  my 

difficulty;  for  it  supposes  me  already  to  possess  the  knowl- 
18 


274  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

edge,  and  the  virtue,  whicli  a  revelation  from  God  is  needed 
to  communicate.  If  I  am  able,  by  my  own  reason,  to  con- 
struct a  perfect  standard  of  morals  to  judge  the  Bible  by, 
what  need  have  I  for  the  Bible  revelation?  And  if  I  have 
the  right  to  refuse  obedience  to  any  commands  I  may  judge 
frivolous  or'  unreasonable,  before  I  know  whether  they  came 
from  God  or  not,  and  am  bound  to  obey  only  those  which 
agree  with  my  notions  of  right,  what  authority  has  the  law 
of  God?  A  revelation  from  God  which  should  submit  its 
truths  to  be  judged  by  the  ignorance,  and  its  commands  by 
the  inclinations,  of  sinful  men,  would  by  that  very  submis- 
sion declare  its  worthlessness.  The  use  of  a  divine  revela- 
tion ii  either  to  tell  us  some  truth  of  which  we  are  igno- 
rant, or  to  enjoin  some  duty  to  which  we  are  disinclined. 

Besides,  it  is  not  possible  to  make  any  such  dissection  of 
the  moral  precepts  of  the  Bible,  from  the  miraculous  his- 
tory which  forms  their  skeleton,  as  will  leave  them  either 
truth  or  authority.  It  is  the  miraculous  history  that  gives 
sanction  to  the  divine  morality,  and  without  it  the  ten  com- 
mandments would  have  no  more  hold  on  any  man's  con- 
science than  the  wise  saws  which  Poor  Richard  says.  Take, 
for  instance,  one  of  the  first  and  most  important  of  the 
Bible  moralities  —  the  sacredness  of  marriage — which  is 
wholly  based  upon  a  narrative  of  events  utterly  unparalleled ; 
and,  if  judged  by  the  usual  course  of  nature,  perfectly  in- 
credible. The  original  diflference  in  the  formation  of  man 
and  woman,  and  God's  making  at  first  one  man  and  one 
woman,  and  joining  them  together  with  his  blessing,  consti- 
tute the  reasons,  and  consecrate  the  pledge  of  marriage. 
^'■For  tJds  cause  shall  a  man  leave  his  father  and  mother — 
although  the  claims  of  the  parental  relation  are  very  strong 
— and  cleave  to  his  wife — with  whom  it  may  be  he  has  but 
a  few  weeks'  acquaintance — and  they  two  shall  he  one  flesh. 
What  therefore  God  hath  joined  together  let  no  man  put 
asunder y     But  if  the  cause  had  no  existence,  save  in  the 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  275 

brain  of  some  antediluvian  novel-writer,  and  God  did  not  so 
unite  them,  the  consequence  is  only  a  notion  also,  and  any 
man  may  leave  his  wife  whenever  he  likes. 

By  far  the  most  incredible  narrative  in  the  Bible  is  con- 
tained in  the  first  verse :  "/?i  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth."  All  the  other  miracles  recorded  in 
it  sink  into  familiarity  compared  with  this  stupendous  dis- 
play of  the  supernatural.  To  the  believer  of  this  first  great 
miracle  none  of  its  subsequent  narratives  can  seem  incredi- 
ble. But  it  is  precisely  upon  this  unexampled  and  incredi- 
ble narrative  that  the  whole  structure  of  Bible  morality  is 
built.  If  this  extraordinary  narrative  be  rejected  as  false, 
all  the  moral  precepts  of  the  Bible  are  not  worth  a  feather. 
The  morality  of  the  Bible,  then,  stands  or  falls  with  its  his- 
tory of  God's  supernatural  works  among  men. 

It  has  been  argued,  that  no  amount  of  testimony  can  au- 
thenticate accounts  of  miracles;  since  a  miracle,  being  a 
violation  of  the  laws  of  nature,  is  contradicted  by  an  unal- 
terable experience,  but  only  suoDorted  by  fallible  human 
testimony. 

But  every  step  of  this  sophism  is  in  error.  A  miracle 
can  not  be  proven  to  be  any  more  a  violation  of  the  laws  of 
nature,  than  the  existence  of  the  nature  regulated  by  laws. 
It  may  be  more  unusual,  but  not  more  supernatural.  The 
restoration  of  life  to  a  dead  man  is  no  greater  violation  of 
the  laws  of  nature  than  the  first  bestowal  of  life  on  dead 
matter.  Were  the  resurrections  as  common  as  childbirths 
nobody  would  consider  them  violations  of  the  laws  of  nature. 

Moreover,  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature  is  not 
based  upon  my  experience,  or  yours,  but  upon  the  testimony 
of  our  teachers ;  which,  so  far  from  being  uniform  and  in- 
variable as  to  the  supremacy  of  the  commonplace  in  nature, 
is  perfectly  conclusive  as  to  the  repeated  occurrence  of  the 
miraculous.  The  miracles  of  Scripture  are  better  authen- 
ticated than  the  facts  of  science. 


276  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

Scientific  men  talk  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  about  the 
laws  of  nature,  as  if  they  were  the  only  agents  known  in 
this  world.  But  every  man  knows  that  he  himself  possesses 
the  power  to  control  the  laws  of  nature,  by  bringing  a  higher 
law  to  arrest  a  lower ;  as  when  the  power  of  vegetation  ar- 
rests the  law  of  gravitation,  and  sends  the  drop  of  rain 
which  had  trickled  down  the  outside  of  the  bark  of  the  pine, 
climbing  up  again  a  hundred  feet;  or  as  when  the  power  of 
animal  life  converts  a  hundred  weight  of  grass  into  a  leg  of 
mutton ;  or  as  when  the  power  of  the  human  intellect  trans- 
forms a  pound,  of  zinc  into  telegrams,  or  a  ton  of  niter  and 
sulphur  into  death  and  destruction.  Now  if  man  can  thus 
control  and  use  the  laws  of  nature  for  human  purposes, 
why  can  not  the  God  who  made  him  so  can-ning  do  as  much? 
Aye  and  as  much  more  as  God  is  greater  than  man? 

But  we  are  told  that  no  testimony  can  prove  that  any 
wonderful  work  has  been  wrought  by  God.  "  No  testimony 
can  reach  to  the  supernatural ;  testimony  can  apply  only  to 
apparent  sensible  facts ;  testimony  can  only  prove  an  extra- 
ordinary, and  perhaps  inexplicable,  phenomenon  or  occur- 
rence; that  it  is  due  to  supernatural  causes  is  entirely 
dependent  on  the  previous  belief  or  assumption  of  the 
parties."* 

But  when  Christ  said,  "  If  I  cast  out  devils  by  the  Spirit 
of  God,  then  the  kingdom  of  God  is  come  unto  you ; "  or 
when  he  said,  at  the  grave  of  Lazarus,  to  Martha,  "  Said  I 
not  unto  thee  that  if  thou  wouldest  believe  thou  shouldest 
see  the  glory  of  God?"  can  we  not  believe  our  Lord's 
testimony,  that  he  cast  out  devils,  and  raised  the  dead,  by 
the  direct  intervention  of  God  ?  He  appeals  to  his  miracles 
as  evidences  of  his  divine  authority :  "  The  works  that  I  do 
in  my  Father's  name,  they  bear  witness  of  me."  "  If  I  do 
not  the  works  of  my  Father,  believe  me  not.     But  if  I  do. 


*  Essays  and  Eeviews,  page  121. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  277 

though  ye  believe  not  me,  believe  the  works ;  that  ye  may 
know  and  believe  that  the  Father  is  in  me,  and  I  in 
him."^'  Now  I  demand  to  know  whether  this  testimony  of 
our  Lord  is  not  to  be  believed  ?  And  whether  he  does  not 
directly  claim  to  work  miracles  by  the  immediate  power  of 
God  ?  The  testimony  of  the  man  whom  God  authenticates, 
by  enabling  him  to  do  such  miracles  as  those  of  Moses  and 
of  Christ,  is  conclusive  as  to  the  power  by  which  they  are 
wrought.  So  you  read  in  Exodus  iii.  that  God  commis- 
sioned Moses  to  work  miracles  as  signs  of  his  divine  com- 
mission, and  seals  of  his  testimony  recorded  in  the  Bible. 

If  we  proceed  now  to  examine  the  facts  of  this  history, 
it  is  evident,  that  neither  your  reason  or  mine,  nor  our  per- 
sonal convictions,  can  be  any  rule  of  what  is  true  and  valid. 
The  most  that  reason  can  say  about  history  is,  that  the  story 
seems  probable ;  but  so  does  any  well-written  novel ;  or  that 
it  is  improbable ;  but  truth  is  often  stranger  than  fiction ; 
and  every  genuine  history  relates  wonderful  events.  Neither 
does  our  personal  knowledge  enable  us  to  tell  what  was  the 
original  historical  fact,  how  much  was  added  by  the  Hebrew 
prejudices  of  Moses,  and  which  are  the  legends  with  which 
it  was  afterward  adorned;  for  neither  you  nor  I  were  there 
to  see.  Nor  can  any  two  of  those  critics,  who  have  under- 
taken to  divide  the  facts  from  the  fables  accordinar  to  their 
personal  convictions  of  what  is  true  and  valid,  agree  upon 
any  common  principle  of  gleaning,  or  in  gathering  in  their 
results.  And  if  they  could,  the  crop  would  not  be  worth 
barn-room;  for  the  only  conclusion  in  which  they  seem  at 
all  likely  to  agree  is,  that  the  story  of  creation  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Book  is  a  myth,  like  one  of  Ovid's  Meta- 
morphoses; and  that  the  prophecy  of  the  resurrection,  at 
the  end,  is  another;  and  that  there  are  a  great  many  legends 
in  the  middle.     Now,  if  so,  why  winnow  such  chaff? 


John,  chap.  z.  25,  38. 


278  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

But  while  the  Jewish  people  exist  as  a  distinct  race,  it  is 
impossible  rationally  to  deny  some  extraordinary  origin  of 
their  extraordinary  character  and  customs;  and  the  Bible 
is  the  only  history  which  pretends  to  tell  it.  The  utter 
failure  of  Rationalistic  criticism  to  give  any  rational  account 
of  the  facts  which  must  be  admitted  to  account  for  the 
existence  of  the  Jews  as  a  distinct  people,  is  ludicrously 
apparent  in  the  attempts  generally  made  to  explain  the 
miraculous  narratives  of  the  Bible.  The  tree  of  good  and 
evil  was  a  poisonous  plant,  like  the  poison  oak,  or  the  ma- 
chineal  tree,  under  which  our  first  parents  fell  asleep,  and 
dreamed  about  the  temptation,  and  the  fall.  The  shining 
face  of  Moses  was  the  natural  effect  of  electricity.  Zecha- 
riah's  vision  was  the  smoke  of  the  lamps  of  the  golden  can- 
dlestick in  the  temple.  The  wise  men  of  the  East  were 
some  peddlers  who  presented  toys  to  the  child  Jesus )  and 
the  star  which  went  before,  their  servant  carrying  a  torch. 
The  angels  who  ministered  to  Christ  in  his  temptation  were 
a  caravan  bearing  provisions.  The  transfiguration  was  an 
electric  storm.  The  plagues  of  Egypt,  the  passage  of  the 
Red  Sea;  and  the  miracles  of  the  desert,  were  merely  natu- 
ral phenomena,  dextrously  used  by  Moses  and  Aaron  to  suit 
their  purpose. 

It  is  alleged  that  these  enthusiastic  patriots,  full  of  the 
superstitions  of  an  early  age,  whilh  attributed  all  prodigies 
to  God,  and  placed  all  heroes  under  his  guidance,  succeeded 
by  their  fiery  eloquence  in  inspiring  their  captive  country- 
men with  the  love  of  liberty;  and  had  political  dexterity 
enough  to  create  a  faction  in  their  favor  in  the  Egypt  cabi- 
net. Then  taking  advantage  of  a  fortunate  succession  of 
calamities  arising  from  natural  causes — such  as  an  extraor- 
dinary rising  of  the  Nile,  in  consequence  <jf  which  it  was 
more  deeply  colored  than  usual  with  the  red  mud  of  Nubia, 
and  overflowed  the  country  to  a  greater  extent  than  usual, 
leaving  ou  its  retreat  numerous  ponds,  which,  of  course, 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  279 

bred  swarms  of  frogs  and  gnats,  and  raised  malaria,  spread- 
ing various  sicknesses  over  the  land, both  to  man  and  beast; 
a  devastating  visit  of  locusts,  the  well-known  scourge  of 
Africa ;  a  remarkable  thunder-storm,  accompanied  with  hail, 
causing  great  havoc  of  growing  crops,  as  such  hail-storms 
always  do ;  followed  by  the  chamsin,  or  dust-storm  from  the 
desert,  darkening  the  air  with  clouds  of  dust  and  sand;  and 
by  an  extraordinary  mortality,  the  natural  result  of  these 
various  causes — they  persuaded  the  superstitious  Egyptians 
that  these  calamities  were  tokens  of  the  displeasure  of  the 
God  of  the  Hebrews,  and  improved  the  opportunity  to  es- 
cape, while  the  resources  of  the  Egyptians  were  exhausted, 
and  their  minds  confounded  by  these  various  misfortunes. 
Leading  them  to  that  part  of  the  Red  Sea  south  of  Suez, 
where  a  succession  of  shoals  stretch  across  from  the  Egyp- 
tian to  the  Arabian  side,  they  crossed  safely  at  low  water, 
while  the  Egyptian  army  perished  by  the  rising  of  the  tide; 
and  the  Israelites  betaking  themselves  to  a  wandering,  pas- 
toral life  in  the  wilderness  of  Arabia,  lived,  as  the  Bedouins 
do  at  this  day,  on  the  milk  of  their  flocks  and  the  manna 
which  was  spontaneously  produced  by  the  tamarisk  trees  of 
Sinai;  where  they  remained  until  they  had  framed  a  civil 
and  religious  code,  and  whence  they  prosecuted  their  con- 
quests in  various  directions  for  fil ty  years,  until  their  inva- 
sion of  Palestine.  This  is  the  sum  of  what,  with  various 
modifications.  Rationalist  writers  and  preachers  present  us, 
as  the  genuine  historic  basis  of  the  Mosaic  narrative. 

It  really  does  seem  to  have  been  very  fortunate  for  the 
Israelites  that  so  many  misfortunes  should  happen  to  fall 
upon  their  oppressors,  all  in  one  season,  and  just  at  the  time 
that  men  of  such  cleverness  as  Moses  and  Aaron  were  among 
them;  and  that  the  Egyptians  should  luckily  have  imbibed 
the  superstition,  that  all  nature  was  under  the  direction  of 
a  Supreme  Moral  Governor,  who  was  able  and  willing  to 
wield  all  the  elements  for  the  punishment  of  oppressors. 


280  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS 

It  was  also  very  lucky  for  these  poor,  overworked,  and 
oppressed  slaves  —  the  class  which  in  all  other  ages  and 
countries  suffers  most  from  hard  times — that  they  should 
have  escaped  unhurt  by  these  calamities ;  for  if  they  had 
suffered  by  them  as  well  as  the  Egyptians,  they  could  not 
have  persuaded  them  that  God  favored  Israel. 

Here  one  can  not  but  wonder  that  these  learned  Egyp- 
tians, whose  colleges  of  priests  were  planted  on  the  banks 
of  the  Nile,  and  who  had  made  the  climate,  soil,  and  pro- 
ductions of  their  native  land  their  constant  study,  should 
have  been  so  ignorant  of  these  natural  causes  of  the  plagues 
— so  easily  discovered  nowadays  by  anybody  who  makes  a 
summer  trip  to  Egypt — as  to  be  terrified  into  emancipating 
their  slaves  by  a  stormy  season.  Just  imagine  to  yourself  a 
couple  of  abolitionist  lecturers  proceeding  to  Lexington  and 
commanding  the  slaveholders  of  Kentucky  to  liberate  their 
slaves  immediately,  on  pain  of  the  Ohio  being  muddy  dur- 
ing high  water,  and  the  swamps  of  the  river-bottom  being 
full  of  frogs  and  musquitoes !  But  this  interpretation  does 
not  reach  the  climax  of  absurdity  till  our  Rationalist  Punch, 
by  way  of  signalizing  his  deliverance  from  Egyptian  bond- 
age, makes  Pharaoh  and  his  army  forget  that  the  tide  ebbs 
and  flows  in  the  Red  vSea,  raises  the  tide  over  a  shoal  faster 
than  cavalry  could  gallop  from  it,  gathers  an  annual  crop  of 
twenty  millions  of  bushels  of  manna  from  the  thorn-bushes 
of  Sinai,  and  feeds  three  millions  of  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren for  forty  years  upon  purgative  medicine !  I ! 

"  We  must  then  give  up  the  problem  as  insoluble ;  for  if 
reason  be  insufficient  to  give  authority  to  the  Bible,  and 
criticism  fails  to  discover  its  truth,  how  are  we  to  know 
that  it  possesses  either?" 

Just  as  you  would  discover  the  truth  of  any  other  his- 
tory, or  the  authority  of  any  other  law.  You  do  not  say, 
"  The  tale  of  the  successive  swellings  of  the  Catawba,  the 
Yadkin,  and  the  Dan — three  times  in  a  fortnight,  in  Feb- 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  281 

ruary,  1781,  immediately  after  the  American  army  had  re- 
treated across  these  rivers,  preventing  Cornwallis  and  the 
British  forces  from  crossing  till  the  little  handful  of  weary 
and  famished  patriots  had  escaped — savors  of  the  marvelous 
and  leans  so  much  toward  the  superstition  of  a  special  prov- 
idence, that  it  must  be  rejected  as  not  historical."  You 
inquire  if  there  be  sufficient  testimony  to  the  fact.  You  do 
not  say,  "  The  Revised  Statutes  present  internal  evidence  of 
being  a  collection  of  political  tracts  by  various  authors, 
written  at  different  times,  differing  also  in  style,  and  of 
various  degrees  of  merit,  many  of  them  contrary  to  my  in- 
most personal  convictions ;  therefore  I  can  not  acknowledge 
them  as  true  and  valid."  You  simply  ask  if  this  be  a  true 
copy  of  the  laws  passed  by  the  legislature  and  signed  by 
the  governor?  Our  inquiry  about  the  truth  of  the  history, 
and  the  authority  of  the  laws  of  the  Bible,  must  be  of  the 
same  kind — an  inquiry  after  testimony.  Is  this  Book  gen- 
uine or  a  forgery?  Is  it  a  true  history  or  a  lying  romance? 
Have  we  any  testimony  on  the  subject? 

But  it  is  alleged  that  the  Book  contains  in  itself  evidence 
of  having  been  written  in  an  unscientific  age,  and  in  an  un- 
historical  manner;  and,  particularly,  that  its  statements  of 
the  creation  of  the  world,  and  of  mankind,  only  six  thou- 
sand years  ago,  are  refuted  by  the  discoveries  of  geology ; 
which  show  us,  that  the  world  is  many  millions  of  years 
old,  and  that  man  has  been  on  this  world  at  least  one  hun- 
dred thousand  years.  In  support  of  this  last  assertion, 
geologists  refer  to  the  remains  of  the  lake  dwellings  in 
Switzerland ;  to  skeletons  of  men  found  in  caves,  with  bones 
of  animals  now  extinct;  to  flint  tools  and  weapons  found  in 
gravel  beds,  said  to  be  of  remote  antiquity ;  to  bones  found 
deep  in  the  Mississippi  bottom ;  and  to  the  monuments  of 
Egypt. 

In  replying  to  this  objection,  we  have  first  to  say  that  we 
have  elsewhere,  in  this  volume,  shown  that  the  Bible  no- 


282  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

where  alleges  tliat  God  created  the  earth  only  six  thousand 
years  ago,  but  in  many  places  emphatically  affirms  the  con- 
trary. 

In  the  second  place,  as  to  the  antiquity  of  man,  the  Bi- 
ble nowhere  says,  that  Adam  was  the  first  human  being 
whom  God  created ;  nor  that  he  and  his  posterity  were  the 
only  intelligent  beings  occupying  this  world  before  our  ten- 
ancy of  it;  nor  that  we  are  even  now  the  exclusive  occu- 
pants. On  the  contrary,  it  makes  very  distinct  allusions  to 
other  races,  capable  of  assuming  serpentine,  swinish,  and 
human  bodies,  and  of  meddling  disastrously  in  earthly  af- 
fairs in  former  times ;  though,  as  it  does  not  profess  to 
teach  us  truths  which  do  not  concern  us,  it  gives  us  no  nar- 
ration of  the  creation  or  history  of  pre-Adamite  animals 
or  men.  But  there  is  no  more  ground  of  objection  against 
the  Bible  for  neglecting  to  give  us  a  history  of  pre-Adamite 
men,  if  there  were  such  men,  than  for  neglecting  to  describe 
the  pre-Adamite  animals,  or  the  coal  measures,  or  the  neb- 
ulae, or  the  climate,  soil,  population,  and  politics  of  Jupiter. 
The  Bible  has  one  great  object — to  teach  men  how  to  be 
holy  and  happy ;  and  it  can  not  be  shown  that  the  chronicles 
of  the  pre- Adamites,  if  they  kept  chronicles  of  their  al- 
leged savage  state,  would  help  us  in  the  acquisition  of  holi- 
ness. 

No  discoveries,  then,  which  geologists  may  make  of  pre- 
Adamite  races  of  men,  can  at  all  affect  the  credit  of  Moses' 
account  of  the  creation  of  Adam,  and  of  the  history  of  his 
family.  They  may  fill  museums,  if  they  please,  with  their 
flint  arrow-heads  and  axes,  they  may  pile  up  pyramids  of 
jtone  mortars,  they  may  perhaps  some  day  discover  an  old- 
*7orld  bronze  railroad,  and  bronze-clad  or  copper-bottomed 
steamboats,  they  may  produce  pre  Adamic  electric,  aero- 
lautic  engines,  and  magnetic  sewing  machines,  or  bone  nee- 
lles,  we  care  not  which;  and  we  will  admire  them,  and  confess 
hat  they  are  very  curious,  and  perhaps  very  old  j  but  unless 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  283 

tliey  can  show  that  Adam  was  descended  from  these  old- 
world  folks,  we  have  no  biblical  quarrel  with  them.  Like 
Moses,  we  will  let  them  rest  in  peace. 

But  we  would  remark,  thirdly,  that  no  such  discoveries 
have  yet  been  made.  No  human  bone,  implement,  or  mon- 
ument, has  yet  been  discovered  which  can  be  proved  to  be 
more  ancient  than  Adam,  or  nearly  so  ancient.  There  is 
not  a  single  indisputable  fact  to  show,  that  any  of  the  tools, 
bones,  or  monuments;  alleged  in  this  discussion,  is  of  any 
specific  date  whatever,  save  that  the  D*anish  bogs  came  down 
to  the  date  of  the  Danish  invasion  of  Ireland  in  the  eleventh 
century;  the  burnt  corn  of  the  Swiss  lake  dwellings  was 
probably  that  which  Julius  Caesar  describes  the  Helvetians 
as  burning  preparatory  to  their  invasion  of  Gaul ;  and  the 
monuments  of  Egypt,  for  which  Bunsen  claimed  twenty 
thousand  years,  are  now  acknowledged  by  the  best  •  Egyp- 
tologists to  reach  not  .quite  to  3000  B.  C.  As  to  the 
bone  found  at  the  base  of  the  bluff  at  Memphis,  if  was 
not  found  in  situ,  and  probably  was  washed  out  of  some 
Indian  grave  at  the  top,  and  buried  in  the  debris.  The 
Abbeville  skull-^  had  a  fresh  tooth  in  it,  for  which  thirty- 
five  thousand  years  was  claime.l,  until  examination  by  a  com- 
petent committee  exposed  the  deception.  Where  there  is  a 
good  paying  demand  for  pre-Adamite  skulls,  there  will  al- 
ways be  a  good  supply.  Dr.  Dowler  calculates  the  age  of  a 
skeleton  of  an  Indian,  found  at  the  depth  of  sixteen  feet  in 
diuging  the  gas  works  at  New  Orleans,  at  fifty  thousand 
years ;  while  the  U.  S.  Coast  Surveying  Department  show 
that  the  whole  Delta  is  not  more  than  four  thousand  four 
hundred  years  old. 

These  gross  errors,  which  affront  our  common  sense, 
wherever  we  are  able  to  test  geological  calculations,  fill  us 


*  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1864,  p.  254.  Annual  Cyclopse- 
dia,  1863,  p.  377. 


284  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

"with  mistrust  of  their  allegations  of  evidence,  which,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  we  can  not  test. 

Of  this  class  is  the  discovery  of  human  bones  in  caves 
containing  the  bones  of  cave  bears,  rhinocerii,  mammoths, 
and  other  extinct  animals.  The  argument  is  that  man  and 
these  animals  lived  at  the  same  time.  Very  well,  what  time 
was  that?  There  is  no  evidence  to  show  that  it  was  a  hun- 
dred thousand  years  ago.  The  Siberian  hunters  fed  their 
dogs  on  the  flesh  of  a  mammoth  they  found  frozen  in  mud 
bluffs  at  the  mouth  of  the  Lena,  and  its  hair  and  wool  are 
now  in  the  museum  of  St.  Petersburg.  Dr.  Warren's 
mastadon  giganteus  had  some  bushels  of  pine  and  maple 
twigs,  in  excellent  preservation,  in  its  stomach,  when  ex- 
humed in  Orange  County,  New  York ;  and  you  may  see  for 
yourself  the  vegetable  fiber  found  in  its  teeth  in  his  museum 
in  Boston.*  Does  any  one  believe  that  the  vegetable  fiber 
and  maple  twigs  have  kept  their  shape  one  hundred  thou- 
sand years?  The  mammoth  found  in  the  ditch  of  the  Tez- 
cucoco  road  must  have  fallen  in  after  the  Incas  had  dug  that 
ditch.  The  Indians  have  a  tradition  that  their  fathers 
hunted  a  huge  deer  with  a  hand  on  his  face,  which  slept 
leaning  against  the  trees.  And  there  is  good  geological 
reason  for  believing  that  the  final  extinction  of  the  mam- 
moth, the  European  rhinoceros,  and  their  contemporaries, 
was  caused  by  the  change  of  climate  in  Northern  Europe, 
Asia,  and  America,  caused  by  the  elevation  of  these  northern 
lands,  which  has  been  going  on  since  the  tenth  century,  and 
which,  about  three  centuries  ago,  closed  the  Polar  Sea,  ren- 
dering Greenland  uninhabitable.  The  juxtaposition,  then, 
of  the  bones  of  man  and  extinct  animals  is  no  proof  of  the 
remote  antiquity  of  either.  And  no  proof  has  been  made 
from  the  nature  or  depth  of  the  overlying  deposits. 

The  shape,  size,  and  general  character  of  the  skulls  al- 

*  Mastodon  Giganteus,  Boston,  1855,  p.  199. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  285 

leged  to  be  of  such  remote  antiquity  give  no  countenance 
to  the  theory  of  man's  brutal  origin;  which  is  the  great 
thing  to  be  gained  by  giving  him  a  remote  antiquity.  The 
Enghis  skull  is  in  no  way  inferior  to  many  good  modern 
Indian  skulls ;  and  the  man  of  Mentone  stood  six  feet  one 
in  his  stocking  soles  (if  he  wore  stockings),  having  a  good 
John  Bull  head  between  his  shoulders,  with  a  facial  angle 
equal  to  that  of  Generals  Grant  or  Von  Moltke ;  and  in  fact 
being  a  fine  old  Gallic  gentleman,  all  of  the  good  old  times. 

Geologists,  however,  lay  stress  on  the  cumulative  charac- 
ter of  the  evidence  they  produce ;  owning  that  no  single  fact 
is  conclusive,  but  claiming  that  credence  should  be  given 
to  the  accumulation  of  facts.  But  no  accumulation  of 
ciphers  will  amount  to  anything.  All  the  alleged  facts  are 
found  to  be  fatally  defective  either  in  authenticity  or  defi- 
niteness.  No  multitude  of  doubts  can  assure  us  of  the 
certainty  of  a  fact  or  assertion.  The  evidence  for  the  pre- 
Adamite  antiquity  of  man  is  only  a  gathering  of  facts 
doubtful,  and  wholly  indeterminate,  without  any  element  of 
proof  of  remote  antiquity.* 

But  there  is  a  source  of  evidence  of  the  most  undeniable 
character,  to  which  we  may  appeal  for  a  decision  of  the 
subject.  The  law  of  population  is  as  certain  as  any  other 
law  of  nature ;  and  it  tends  to  the  regular  increase  of  man- 
kind. Population  tends  to  double  itself  every  twenty-five 
years,  as  we  see  in  the  United  States.  In  less  favored 
countries  the  rate  is  not  so  rapid.  In  Europe  it  doubles 
every  fifty  years ;  and  nowhere  in  less  than  two  centuries. 
And  the  result  is,  that  if  the  human  race  had  existed  on 


*  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  the  subject,  and  references  to  the  au- 
thorities, which  our  space  here  forbids,  I  must  refer  the  curious 
reader  to  the  Princeton  Review,  Vol.  XL.  No.  4,  where  I  have  no- 
ticed every  fact  bearing  on  the  subject  up  to  that  date;  merely 
adding  that  no  new  fact,  establishing  man's  remote  antiquity,  has 
been  established  up  to  this  date,  September  21,  1874. 


286  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

this  eartli  under  existing  laws  of  nature,  as  the  evolutionists 
allege,  for  one  hundred  thousand  years,  not  only  must  they 
have  multiplied  until  their  bones  would  have  covered  the 
earth,  and  filled  the  sea,  but,  as  Sir  John  Herschel  shows, 
they  would  have  formed  a  vertical  column,  having  for  its 
base  the  whole  surface  of  the  earth,  and  for  its  height  three 
thousand  six  hundred  and  seventy -four  times  the  sun's  dis- 
tance from  the  earth  !* 

The  existing  population  of  the  globe  corresponds  pretty 
well  to  the  natural  increase  of  three  pairs  in  forty  centuries, 
which  is  something  near  to  the  Bible  chronology.  The  laws 
of  population,  then,  inexorably  refuse  the  indefinite,  or 
even  the  remote  antiquity  of  mankind,  and  vindicate  Moses 
as  a  writer  of  truthful  history. 

The  alleged  anachronisms  of  the  Pentateuch  have  been 
adduced  as  testimony  that  it  could  not  have  been  written 
till  long  after  the  time  of  Moses.  These  alleged  anachro- 
nisms are  generally  the  insertion  of  a  modern  name  of  a  city 
instead  of  the  ancient  name,  or  an  explanatory  addition 
which  would  not  have  been  necessary  in  the  days  of  Moses. 
Now  if  all  these  cases  could  be  proved,  they  would  at  most 
only  show  that  the  scribes  who  copied  the  manuscripts  in 
later  ages  had  inserted  these  explanatory  changes  or  addi- 
tions, under  proper  authority.  Everybody's  common  sense 
will  tell  him,  that  Moses  did  not  narrate  his  own  death  in 
the  last  chapter  of  Deuteronomy;  but  it  is  none  the  less 
true  though  Joshua,  or  some  other  prophet,  added  that 
postscript. 

But  Hengstenberg  has|  examined  these  alleged  anachro- 
nisms in  detail,  and  shown  that  the  objectors  allow  themselves 
to  interpolate  into  the  text  a  meaning  of  their  own  in  order 
to  show  the  inaccuracy  of  the  Bible.    For  instance,  Genesis 


*■  Familiar  Lectures,  page  456. 

t  Authenticity  of  the  Pentateuch,  II.  150. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  287 

KH.  6,  "  The  Canaanite  was  then  in  the  land,"  they  maintain 
could  only  be  written  after  the  Canaanites  had  been  driven 
out.  They  interpolate  still,  which  is  not  in  the  text.  But 
they  entirely  mistake  the  meaning  of  the  passage,  which 
refers  to  an  earlier  statement  of  the  same  fact,  chapter  x. 
15,  to  show  that  Abraham,  the  heir  of  the  promise,  came  as 
a  stranger  and  a  pilgrim  to  a  land  preoccupied  by  a  power- 
ful people,  who  are  again  mentioned,  chapter  xiii.  7,  for  the 
purpose  of  showing  how  Lot  and  Abraham  came  to  be  so 
crowded  as  to  separate. 

Another  of  the  prominent  instances  is  the  name  of  the 
ancient  city  of  Hebron,  which,  in  the  book  of  Joshua,  is 
said  to  have  been  anciently  called  Kirjath-arba.  But  Num- 
bers xiii.  22,  which  states  that  Hebron  was  built  seven  years 
before  Zoan  in  Egypt,  and  was  the  residence  of  Ahiman, 
Sheshai,  and  Talmai,  the  sons  of  Anak,  shows  that  the  writer 
was  well  acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  place,  and  Gen- 
esis XXXV.  27  shows  that  Hebron  was  the  first  name,  and 
that  it  had  two  other  names  added  to  it,  both  after  the  time 
of  Abraham,  since  Mamre  was  bis  contemporary,  and  the 
Anakim  lived  centuries  later.  This  may  stand  for  a  speci- 
men of  the  alleged  anachronisms  of  the  Pentateuch. 

But  now  comes  Bishop  Colenso  with  his  slate  and  pencil 
to  demonstrate  to  us  that,  no  matter  who  wrote  it,  or  by 
what  external  authority  it  is  commended,  the  Pentateuch  is 
so  full  of  arithmetical  errors,  and  of  impossible  narratives, 
in  its  accounts  of  common  afikirs,  as  well  as  in  its  miracu- 
lous stories,  that  not  only  is  it  not  the  Word  of  God,  but 
that  it  is  not  even  a  truthful  history,  and  stands  self-con- 
victed of  being  a  collection  of  fables.  Of  course,  if  that 
can  be  proved,  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter,  though  it 
would  still  seem  strange  that  it  should  have  been  left  for 
the  bishop  to  discover  Moses'  ignorance  of  arithmetic,  and 
of  camp-life  among  the  Arabs.  Nevertheless  the  very  nov- 
elty of  a  bishop  assaulting  the  Bible  in  such  a  style  has 


288  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

secured  for  him  a  large  number  of  readers,  many  of  them 
ignorant  enough  to  believe  his  assertions,  though  too  indo- 
lent to  test  his  calculations,  or  even  to  read  the  passages  he 
criticises.  This  renders  some  notice  of  his  criticisms  neces- 
sary according  to  our  plan  of  considering  objections  accord- 
ing to  their  popularity,  rather  than  according  to  their  merit. 
For,  on  examining  the  bishop's  objections  to  the  Bible,  they 
are  all  found  to  arise  from  want  of  science,  want  of  sense, 
or  ignorance  of  Scripture — an  inability  to  read  the  Scrip- 
tures in  their  original  Hebrew,  or  even  to  cite  them  correctly 
in  English.  In  some  criticisms  he  contrives  to  compile 
these  three  kind  of  blunders  into  a  single  chapter,  making 
a  mosaic  of  very  amusing  reading  indeed. 

Of  course  we  can  only  give  specimens  of  his  peculiar 
style  of  attack  on  the  Bible ;  for  to  expose  all  his  blunders 
would  require  some  volumes  as  large  as  his  own.  But  we 
shall  select  illustrative  instances  of  the  bishop's  blunders 
from  each  of  the  departments  indicated  above. 

As  a  specimen  of  the  bishop's  blunders  in  science,  let  us 
take  the  first  which  he  offers — his  attempt  to  convict  Moses 
of  a  contradiction  to  geology  in  his  account  of  the  deluge. 

Bishop  Colenso  declares  that  the  Bible  teaches  that  the 
deluge  was  universal,  and  that  this  is  contradicted,  among 
other  things,  by  certain  geological  discoveries,  in  Auvergne, 
of  volcanic  cones  of  light  cinders,  which  would  have  been 
swept  away  by  any  such  flood. 

Aye,  if  they  had  only  been  there  at  that  time !  But  Eli 
de  Beaumont,  a  learned  geologist,  not  convicted  of  so  many 
blunders  as  the  bishop,  alleges  that  the  whole  of  the  system 
of  Teanarus,  including  the  elevation  of  Stromboli,  and 
JEtna,,  has  been  formed  since  the  catastrophe  of  the  princi- 
pal Alps;  and  that  the  volcanoes  of  Auvergne  and  the 
Vivarrusare  of  post-Adamic  origin.*  So  the  bishop's  geology 

*  Creation's  Testimony  to  its  God.    London,  1867,  page  338. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  289 

does  not  contradict  what  he  thinks  the  Bible  says  after  all. 
On  the  contrary,  so  far  from  geology  contradicting  a  univer- 
sal deluge,  the  best  geologists  speak  of  every  part  of  the 
earth  having  been  repeatedly  under  the  sea,  and  they  collect 
its  fossils  on  the  tops  of  the  mountains. 

But  the  bishop  ought  to  know  that  hundreds  of  years 
ago,  be!bre  geology  was  born,  some  of  the  most  learned 
bishops  and  theologians  of  his  own  Church,  as  well  as  some 
of  the  chief  s -holars  of  the  dissenters,  following  the  most 
learned  of  the  Hebrew  rabbis,  did  not  believe  that  the  Bible 
taught  that  the  deluge  was  universal.  For  instance,  Bishop 
Stillingfleet,  in  his  great  work,  Origincs  Sacra,  says:  "I  can 
not  see  any  urgent  neceessity  from  the  Scriptures  to  assert 
that  the  flood  did  spread  over  all  the  surface  of  the  earth. 
That  all  mankind,  those  in  the  ark  excepted,  were  destroyed 
by  it,  is  most  certain,  ac  ording  to  the  Scriptures.  The 
flood  was  universal  as  to  mankind,  but  from  thence  follows 
no  necessity  at  all  of  asserting  the  universality  of  it  as  to  the 
globe  of  the  earth,  unless  it  be  sufficiently  proved  that  the 
whole  earth  was  peopled  before  the  flood;  which  I  despair 
of  ever  seeing  proved."  Matthew  Poole  says:  "Where  was 
the  neei  of  overwhelming  those  regions  of  the  earth  in 
which  there  were  no  human  beings?  It  would  be  highly 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  mankind  had  so  increased  be- 
fore the  deluge  as  to  have  penetrated  to  all  the  corners  of 
the  earth.  It  is  indeed  not  probable  that  they  had  ex- 
tended themselves  beyond  the  limits  of  Syria  and  Mesopo- 
tamia. Absurd  it  would  be  to  affirm  that  the  efi'ects  of  the 
punishment,  inflicted  upon  men  alone,  applied  to  those  places 
in  which  there  were  no  men.  If,  then,  we  should  entertain 
the  belief  that  not  so.  much  as  the  hundredth  part  of  the 
globe  was  overspread  with  water,  still  the  deluge  would 
be  universal ;  because  the  extirpation  took  effect  upon  all 
the  part  of  the  globe  then  inhabited." 

Nor  does  the  language  of  the  Bible  necessarily  convey 
19 


290  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

the  idea  that  the  whole  surface  of  the  globe  was  covered 
with  water.  Dathe,  professor  of  Hebrew  (in  his  Opuscala  ad 
Crisin,  edited  by  Rosenmuller,  1795),  says:  '"Interpreters 
do  not  agree  whether  the  deluge  inundated  the  whole  earth 
or  only  the  regions  then  inhabited.  I  adopt  the  latter 
opinion.  The  phrase  all  does  not  prove  the  inundation  to 
have  been  universal.  It  appears  that  in  many  places  kol  is 
to  be  understood  as  limited  to  the  thing  or  place  spoken  of. 
Hence  all  the  animals  introduced  into  the  ark  were  only 
those  of  the  region  inundated." 

But  the  most  literal  rendering  of  the  language  of  Moses 
does  not  necessitate *our  belief  that  when  he  says  that  the 
waters  covered  the  whole  earth,  arets,  he  meant  the  whole 
globe.  The  common  Bible  meaning  of  this  word  is  land, 
country,  or  region,  as  the  perpetually  recurring  phrases, 
the  land,  arets,  of  Havilah,  the  land  of  Nod,  the  land  of 
Ethiopia,  the  land  of  Goshen,  the  land  of  Egypt,  the  land 
of  Canaan,  which  occurs  three  hundred  and  ninety  times, 
may  convince  every  reader  beyond  the  possibility  of  mis- 
take How  now,  from  this  word  being  used  by  Moses, 
could  this  learned  bishop  conclude  that  he  necessarily  meant 
to  describe  the  globe  ?  Moses  says,  "  The  waters  prevailed 
upon  and  covered  the  whole  country."  The  bishop  trans- 
lates, "covered  the  whole  globe;"  evidently  in  order  to 
make  Moses  commit  a  blunder. 

But  re "erence  is  made  to  the  expression,  "All  the  high 
hills  under  the  whole  heavens  were  covered;"  which  the 
bishop  will  have  it  meant  all  the  mountains  under  the  moon. 

But  the  popular  use  of  the  word  "heavens,"  in  Moses' 
day,  had  as  little  reference  to  universal  space,  as  the  word 
earth,  or  hind,  had  to  the  whole  globe.  It  meant  simply 
the  visible  heavens  over  any  place :  and  its  extent  was  de- 
fined by  the  extent  of  the  earth  those  visible  heavens'  cov- 
ered. Thus  Moses  himself  defines  it,  Deuteronomy  iv.  32 : 
"Ask  from  the  one  side  of  heaven  unto  the  other."     Deu- 


MCSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  291 

tcronomy  xxviii.  8:  "Thy  heaven  over  thee  shall  be  as 
brass."  Deuteronomy  ii.  25:  "This  day  I  will  begin  to 
put  the  fear  of  thee  upon  the  nations  that  are  under  the 
whole  heaven."  And  so  commonly  throughout  the  Bible, 
"the  clouds  of  heaven,"  "the  fowls  of  heaven,"  refer  to  the 
optical  heavens.  Such  is  the  meaning  in  Genesis.  Noah 
describes  the  deluge  as  it  appeared  to  him,  as  covering  all 
tlie  hills  within  the  horizon  of  observation,  and  Moses 
copies  Noah's  log-book. 

The  geologist  adds  his  testimony  to  the  existing  evidences 
of  the  recent  submergence  of  a  large  region  of  Persia  and 
Turkey  around  the  Caspian  Sea,  and  its  subsequent  eleva- 
tion. But  it  is  no  part  of  our  business  to  show  in  what 
way  God  produced  the  deluge.  Geology  shows  us,  how- 
ever, that  the  submergence  of  parts  of  the  earth  beneath 
the  sea,  and  their  subsequent  elevation,  is  the  most  common 
of  all  geological  phenomena;  almost  all  existing  continents 
and  islands  having  been  submerged. 

The  bishop  is  as  far  behind  the  age  in  his  astronomy  as 
in  his  geology.  lie  blindly  follows  the  Infidels  of  the  last 
century  in  their  attack  on  Joshua's  miracle,  arresting  the 
sun  and  moon,  as  inconsistent  with  their  science;  which 
taught  the  immobility  of  the  sun  and  moon,  it  seems,  and 
was  entirely  ignorant  of  the  mo  lern  discovery  of  the  grand 
motions  of  the  fixed  stars,  including  our  sun,  and  of  the 
dependence  of  all  the  planets  including  our  earth  and  moon, 
upon  that  grand  motion  for  the  motive  power  of  their  revolu- 
tions.* 

One  wonders  from  what  college  the  bishop  came  out  igno- 
rant of  facts  known  to  the  boys  of  American  common 
schools. 

A  great  many  of  the  bishop's  blunders  are  occasioned  by 
want  of  sense      The  process  is  very  simple.     The  sacred 

*See  this'suhjcct  more  fully  discussed  in  chapter  X EI.,  Telescopic 
Views  of  Scripture. 


292  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

history  is  very  brief.  Only  the  headings  of  things  are  re- 
corded. Much  must  be  supplied  by  the  common  sense  of 
the  reader.  The  manners  of  the  East  are  very  different 
from  ours.  Three  thousand  years  have  greatly  changed  the 
face  of  the  country  Ignore  all  this,  and  interpret  the 
Pentateuch  as  though  it  consisted  of  the  letters  of  Our  Own 
Correspondent,  and  you  will  find  difiiculties  on  every  page. 
Such  is  the  style  of  Colenso's  criticism.  Assume  that  Moses 
gives  a  full  and  complete  chronicle  of  all  events  which  have 
happened  since  the  creation,  and  then  dispute  the  recorded 
fa  ts  because  it  can  easily  be  shown  he  omitted  many. 

But  the  bishop  has  not  the  honor  of  discovering  this 
method,  or  of  founding  this  school  of  criticism.  We  have 
heard  village  critics  of  the  loom  and  the  forge  discuss  such 
questions  as  are  handled  by  Colenso,  and  the  Essays  and 
Reviews,  and  often  with  much  more  acuteness  and  penetra- 
tion. With  what  eclat  has  our  village  critic  unhorsed  the 
itinerant  preacher  with  the  inquiry,  What  became  of  the 
forks  belonging  to  the  nine  and  twenty  knives  which  Ezra 
brought  back  from  Babylon?  but  was,  alas!  himself  routed 
in  the  moment  of  triumph  by  the  inquiry  as  to  the  sex  of 
the  odd  clean  beasts  of  Noah's  sevens.  How  often  has  our 
village  blacksmith  critic  requested  a  sermon  upon  the  gene- 
alogy of  3Ielchizedek,  which  the  minister  agreed  to  furnish 
when  our  blacksmith  could  tell  him  the  foundry  which 
manufactured  Tubal  Cain's  hammer  and  anvil  Lot's  wife, 
the  witch  of  Endor,  Jonah's  whale,  the  sundial  of  Ahaz, 
and  the  population  of  Nineveh,  were  all  duly  discussed,  to- 
gether with  the  bodies  in  which  the  angels  dined  with  Abra- 
ham. Did  the  loaves  and  fishes  miraculously  multiply  in 
numbers,  or  increase  in  size?  Where  did  the  angel  get  the 
flour  to  bake  the  cake  for  Elijah?  Did  our  Lord  catch  the 
fish  by  net,  or  by  miracle,  which  he  used  in  the  Lord's  Din- 
ner on  the  shore  of  the  Sea  of  Galilee.  But  the  question — 
which  we  marvel  beyond  measure  that  the  bishop  overlooks 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  293 

— always  was,  Where  did  Cain  get  his  wife?  This  is  the 
fundamental  question  for  such  critics.  The  difficulty,  it 
will  be  perceived,  lies  across  the  very  threshold  of  the  his- 
tory. How  did  he  stumble  over  it  without  record  of  his 
misadventure?  It  recurs,  however,  on  every  page.  If  the 
bishop  will  only  answer  that  question,  and  introduce  us  po- 
litely to  Cain's  wife,  I  will  engage  that  she  will  answer  most 
of  these  other  difficult  questions.  Had  Seth  a  wife?  How 
could  Noah  and  his  three  sons  build  a  ship  larger  than  the 
Great  Eastern?  We  can  imagine  the  roars  of  laughter 
with  which  the  bigger  school-boys  will  greet  the  serious  ex- 
hibition of  their  old  tests  of  dullness,  in  a  printed  book, 
and  by  a  learned  bishop,  as  objections  to  the  inspiration  of 
the  Bible  But  the  bishop  does  actually  devote  Chapter  V. 
to  the  impossibility  of  Moses  addressing  all  Israel ;  Chapter 
VI.  to  the  extent  of  the  camp  compared  with  the  priest's 
duties;  Chapter  XX.  to  the  grave  difficulty  of  the  three 
priestly  families  consuming  the  offerings  of  some  millions  of 
people ;  which  surely  to  a  bishop  of  the  Church  of  England 
should  not  be  an  unparalleled  feat.  Such  chapters  enable 
us  to  appreciate  the  mental  caliber  of  our  critic,  and  excuse 
us  from  argument  with  a  man  incapable  of  interpreting 
popular  phrases.  He  would  prove  the  associated  press  dis- 
patches all  a  myth,  because  it  is  impossible  for  the  House 
of  Commons  to  appear  at  the  bar  of  the  House  of  Lords — 
six  hundred  men  to  stand  on  four  square  yards  of  floor; 
for  McClellan  to  address  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  which 
extended  along  a  line  of  thirty  miles ;  for  Grant  and  Sher- 
man— two  men — to  capture  Vicksburg  and  thirty  thousand 
prisoners !     Manifestly  impossible. 

The  most  specious  of  all  the  sophistry  spread  over  the  vol- 
ume is  that  contained  in  the  Seventeenth  Chapter,  regard- 
ing the  increase  of  Jacob's  family,  of  seventy  persons,  to  a 
nation  of  two  or  three  millions,  in  Egypt,  during  the  two 
hundred  and  fifteen  years  to  which  he  confines  the  bondage. 


294  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

But  it  is  only  another  case  of  Cain's  wife.  The  Pentateuch 
gives  us  the  list  of  Jacob's  children  and  their  wives,  but 
makes  no  formal  mention  in  that  place  of  their  servants  and 
retainers.  These,  in  Abraham's  times,  amounted  to  three 
hundred  fencible  men,  or  a  population  of  fifteen  hundred; 
who  would  have  increased  in  Jacob's  time  to  several  thou- 
sands, capable  of  defending  the  border  land  of  Goshen 
against  the  marauding  Bedouin.  And  this  population  could 
easily  increase  to  the  three  millions  of  the  Exodus,  at  the 
same  ratio  in  which  the  population  of  the  United  States  is 
now  increasing;  so  that  it  is  a  mere  superfluity  of  naughti- 
ness for  the  bishop  to  deny  what  the  sacred  historian  so 
emphatically  asserts:  "That  the  people  were  fruitful,  and 
increased  abundantly,  and  multiplied,  and  the  land  was 
filled  with  them."  But  the  bishop  utterly  ignores  the  peo- 
ple of  the  dan,  and  taking  his  slate  and  pencil  ciphers  out 
the  impossibility  of  Jacob's  family  amounting  to  so  many. 
And  yet  it  is  not  impossible  that  in  the  four  hundred  and 
thirty  years  which  the  sacred  historian  so  precisely  asserts 
as  the  period  of  their  sojourn  in  Egypt,  Exodus  xii.  40, 
the  family  alone  might  have  multiplied  as  fast  as  the  family 
of  the  famous  Jonathan  Edwards,  which,  in  a  hundred  years 
after  his  death,  numbered  two  thousand  souls. 

Peter  Cartwright,  the  venerable  Methodist  minister,  cele- 
brated his  eighty-seventh  birthday  on  the  first  of  September, 
1871,  at  Pleasant  Plains,  Sangamon  County,  Illinois,  sur- 
rounded by  one  hundred  and  twenty  children,  grandchildren 
and  great-grandchildren.  Now,  if  this  family  of  two  per- 
sons could  so  increase  in  eighty-seven  years,  why  could  not 
Jacob's  family,  of  seventy  persons,  increase  in  equal  ratio  ? 
In  that  case,  even  in  the  two  hundred  and  fifteen  years  to 
which  the  bishop  limits  the  sojourn  in  Egypt,  the  Israelites 
would  have  amounted  to  over  eight  millions.  If  it  be  ob- 
jected that  this  was  a  case  of  special  blessing,  we  answer 
that  the  Israelites  are  expressly  asserted  to  have  been  spe- 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  295 

cially  and  wonderfully  multiplied.  There  is,  therefore,  no 
improbability  in  Moses'  numbers. 

The  bishop  ascribes  to  Moses  another  of  his  own  blunders; 
this  time,  however,  in  reading  his  Bible  in  plai.i  English, 
which  correctly  translates  the  Hebrew — Exodus  xiii.  2.  The 
Lord  commands  Moses  and  Israel  to  "  Sanctify  to  him  every 
male  that  openeth  the  womb,  both  of  man  and  beast,"  from 
the  time  of  the  death  of  the  first-born  of  the  Egyptians. 
The  impropriety  of  ex  post  facto  legislation,  the  reason  as- 
signed for  this  law,  and  the  grammatical  meaning  of  the 
language  in  the  present  tense,  all  combine  to  show  that  the 
law  is  prospective;  and  the  number  of  the  first-born,  twen- 
ty-two thousand  two  hundred  and  seventy-five,  afterward 
given  in  Numbers,  shows  plainly  that  this  is  the  meaning, 
being  about  the  proper  increase  of  thirteen  months.  But 
the  bishop  strangely  blunders  into  the  notion  that  this  is 
the  number  of  all  the  first-born  of  Israel ;  only  about  one 
in  forty-five  or  fifty,  and  therefore  argues  against  the  his- 
torical veracity  of  the  Pentateuch.  A  good  many  of  the 
bishop's  blunders  arise  in  this  way  from  misreading  his 
Bible. 

He  makes  another  blunder  of  this  kind,  and  as  usual 
charges  it  on  Moses,  in  his  misreading  of  Leviticu.i  xxiii.  40, 
as  if  directing  Israel  to  make  booths  of  palm  branches  and 
willows  at  the  feast  of  tabernacles,  instead  of  bearing  the 
palms  of  victory  in  triumph  into  the  temple  of  God.  The 
son  of  the  chief  rabbi  of  London  ridicules  the  bishop's 
Hebrew  scholarship  here,  saying  that  any  Jewish  child 
could  have  set  him  right;  but  had  he  read  even  his  English 
translation  carefully  he  need  not  have  blundered  liere. 

In  connection  with  the  subject  of  the  numbers  of  the 
people  we  notice  his  tacit  assumption — that  Moses  records 
everything  necessary  for  a  statistical  table — in  his  criticisms 
on  the  numbers  of  the  Danites  and  Levites,  Chapters  XVIII. 
and    XVI.;    and  on    Judah's  family,   Chapter   II.      He 


296  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

takes  it  for  granted  tliat  because  the  Exodus  took  place  in 
the  lifetime  of  the  fourth  generation  of  some  of  the  sons 
of  Jacob,  therefore  there  were  none  but  four  generations 
born  in  the  two  hundred  and  fifteen  years  to  which  he  con- 
fines the  bondage,  and  none  but  those  whose  names  are  re- 
corded. This  is  a  blunder  of  the  same  sort  as  if  he  should 
mistake  the  list  of  the  British  peerage  for  a  census  of  all 
the  families  of  Great  Britain,  and  calculate  the  average  du- 
ration of  human  life  by  the  ages  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
and  Lord  Palmerston.  But  here  we  have  a  wonderful  in- 
stance of  the  providence  which  often  makes  objectors  re- 
fute themselves.  The  chapter  on  Judah's  family  (II.)  shows 
that  in  forty-two  years  Judah  had  grandchildren  ten  or  twelve 
years  old;  as  many  Syrians,  Persians,  and  Hindoos  have  at 
this  day.  But  if  six  generations  could  thus  be  born  in 
Syria,  or  India,  in  a  century,  why  not  in  Egypt?  And  1 
Chronicles  vii.  20,  21  enumerates  ten  generations  of  the 
sons  of  Ephraim ;  giving  ample  opportunity  for  the  biblical 
increase. 

Another  set  of  the  bishop's  blunders  is  occasioned  by  his 
utter  ignorance  of  camp-life,  especially  among  the  Arabs. 
In  Chapter  VIII.  he  assumes  that  all  the  people  had  tents, 
and  the  bishop  orders  them  made  of  leather.  But  he  con- 
cludes they  could  not  possibly  get  them,  nor  if  they  had 
them  could  they  carry  them.  By  and  by  he  provides  them 
with  two  millions  of  cattle,  however;  and  it  is  likely  each 
of  them  had  a  skin,  and  was  able  to  carry  it  for  a  while, 
while  the  Hebrews  dwelt  in  the  booths  of  the  encampments 
they  still  commemorate  in  the  feast  of  tabernacles.  But 
the  word  "tents"  is  the  common  phrase  for  any  kind  of 
shelter  in  Scripture,  including  even  houses  in  the  expres- 
sion, "To  your  tents,  O  Israel,"  used  in  the  days  of  David. 

In  Chapter  IX.  he  discusses  the  probability  of  their  ob- 
taining arms  in  Egypt.  A  week  with  one  of  the  Union 
armies  would  show  him  how  speedily  freedmen  can  provide 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  297 

themselves  with  arras  and  learri  tactics;  and  a  short  resi- 
dence in  Ireland  would  teach  him  the  utter  impossibility  of 
preventing  a  discontented  people  from  arming  themselves 
even  with  firearms ;  much  more  when  every  grove  furnished 
artillery.  He  protests  that  all  Kgypt  could  not  furnish 
lambs  enough  for  the  passover;  because  in  Natal  an  acre 
will  only  graze  one  sheep,  forgetting  that  Moses  was  not 
raising  sheep  in  Natal,  but  in  the  best  of  the  land  of  Goshen, 
which,  if  as  fertile  as  the  county  of  Dorset  in  England, 
would  easily  keep  five  millions  of  sheep. 

In  Chapter  X.  he  insists  on  the  impossibility  of  giving 
warning  oF  the  passover,  and  subsequent  march,  in  one  day, 
to  a  population  as  large  as  London,  scattered  over  two  or 
three  counties.  Has  he  forgotten  the  straws  carried  over 
all  Ireland  in  one  night,  and  the  Chupatties  of  the  Indian 
Mutiny  ?  The  negro  insurrection  of  Charleston  was  known 
by  the  negroes  of  Louisiana  two  days  before  their  masters 
received  the  intelligence  by  mail.  Critics  know  little  of  the 
power  of  the  love  of  freedom.  But  there  is  no  reason  for 
the  bishop's  supposition  that  all  the  preparations  for  leaving 
were  made  in  one  day,  save  his  own  mistake  of  the  Hebrew 
of  Exodus  xii.  12,  as  referring  to  the  night  of  the  day  on 
which  God  spake  to  Moses,  instead  of  the  night  of  the  day 
of  which  he  was  speaking,  as  the  slightest  reflection  on  the 
context  shows. 

In  Chapter  XI.  the  bishop  assumes  the  functions  of  Major- 
General,  and  masses  his  army — rank,  and  file,  wagon  train, 
hospital,  commissariat,  contrabands,  droves  of  cattle,  and 
camp  followers — into  a  mass  of  fifty  front  and  twenty-two  miles 
long  Very  naturally  he  gets  into  a  tremendous  jam,  out  of 
which  we  have  no  intention  of  extricating  him ;  merely  re- 
marking that  bishops  do  not  make  good  generals,  and  that 
Arab  Sheikhs  do  not  march  in  that  way.  They  scatter 
themselves  and  their  cattle  over  the  whole  country  for  forty 
or  fifty  miles,  and  have  no  confusion ;  and  attend  moreover 


298  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

to  Moses'  sanitary  camp  regulations,  in  their  several  en- 
campments. 

In  Chapter  XII.  he  exerts  himself  to  starve  the  cattle 
for  want  of  pasture  and  water;  garbling  Moses'  account  of 
the  wilderness  for  that  purpose,  Deuteronomy  viii.  15. 
"Beware  that  thou  forget  not  Jehovah,  thy  God,  who  led 
thee  through  the  great  and  terrible  wilderness,  wherein  were 
fiery  serpents,  and  scorpions,  where  there  was  no  water." 
Here  he  stops,  as  if  this  was  all  that  referred  to  the  subject. 
But  when  we  turn  to  the  passage,  we  find  that  he  omits  the 
most  material  part  of  the  speech.  For  Moses  goes  on  to 
say,  in  the  hearing  of  all  Israel,  who  could  certainly  have 
contradicted  him  had  the  fact  not  been  well  known  to  them, 
''Who  brought  thee  forth  water  out  of  the  rock  of  flint." 
Moses'  account  is  quite  self-consistent,  and  the  bishop's 
garbling  of  it  is  dishonest.  There  were  districts  of  x\rabia 
so  dry  and  sterile  that  but  for  this  miraculous  supply  both 
men  and  beasts  had  perished;  but  the  greater  part  of  the 
country  was  simply  uninhabited  pasture  land,  sufficiently 
productive  even  now  to  support  several  Arab  tribes;  and 
much  better  wooded  and  watered  then.  The  monuments 
of  Egypt  abundantly  testify  the  number  and  power  of  its 
shepherd  kings,  who  pastured  their  flocks  upon  it  in  their 
successive  invasions  of  Egypt. 

The  bishop  says.  Chapter  XIII.,  that  "the  climax  of  in- 
consistencies between  facts  and  figures  is  reached  when  we 
come  to  the  notice  by  the  Lord  to  Israel,  contained  in 
Exodus  xxiii.  29,  "  I  will  not  drive  them,  the  Canaanites, 
out  from  before  thee  in  one  year,  lest  the  land  become  des- 
olate, and  the  beasts  of  the  field  multiply  against  thee." 
The  argument  is  that  a  population  of  two  millions  was  as- 
signed to  a  territory  of  only  eleven  thousand  square  miles; 
and  consequently  would  be  more  dense  than  the  population 
of  the  agricultural  region  of  England,  where  there  is  no 
danger  of  wild  beasts  multiplying. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  299 

But  the  objection  is  again  based  on  a  blunder,  and  a  garb- 
ling of  the  text  of  Scripture  Had  the  bishop  done  him- 
self and  his  readers  the  justice  to  complete  the  passage 
which  he  has  half  cited,  by  inserting  the  next  two  verses, 
he  could  have  read  verse  thirty-one :  "And  I  will  set  thy 
bounds  from  the  Red  Sea  even  to  the  Sea  of  the  Philistines, 
and  from  the  desert  unto  the  river,"  i.  c,  the  Euphrates,  as 
other  passages  show,  Genesis  xv.  18.  That  is  to  say,  a  ter- 
ritory five  hundred  miles  long  by  one  hundred  miles  broad, 
or  fifty  thousand  square  miles,  was  to  be  occupied  by  two 
millions  of  people.  That  is  about  the  present  population, 
and  all  travelers  testify  that  three-fourths  of  it  lies  desolate. 
Prof.  Porter  saw  seventy  deserted  towns  and  villages  in 
Bashan  alone.  But  for  the  rifle  and  gunpowder  the  wild 
beasts  would  now  overpower  the  inhabitants. 

By  a  wonderful  providence,  contemporaneously  with  these 
attacks,  the  Lord  has  raised  up  an  army  of  scholars,  travel- 
ers, and  archaeologists,  whose  explorations  illustrate  the 
Bible  in  a  remarkable  manner,  throwing  new  light  upon  its 
history,  poetry,  and  prophecy.  It  is  refreshing  to  turn 
from  the  cavils  of  ignorant  criticism  to  the  clear  light  of 
discovered  facts  and  imperishable  monuments. 

The  Bible  history  has  recently  received  a  wonderful 
amount  of  illustration  and  confirmation  from  the  researches 
of  scholars  and  discoverers  amid  the  ruins  of  Egypt,  Persia, 
and  Assyria;  completely  explodiag  the  theory  that  thig 
history  was  a  comparatively  recent  composition,  written 
long  after  the  events  which  it  records,  and  betraying  its 
want  of  genuineness  by  the  anachronisms  and  errors  of  de- 
scription of  historical  and  natural  events  with  which  it 
abounds.  Wherever  it  differed  from  the  statements  of  any 
Greek,  or  other  heathen  historian,  it  was  forthwith  alleged 
that  Moses  was  wrong,  and  the  profane  author  was  right; 
and  for  a  long  time  nobody  could  bring  any  evidence  on  the 
other   side,  because  there  were  no  contemporary  records; 


300  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

the  oldest  heathen  historian  being  a  thousand  years  later 
than  Moses.  But  by  some  strange  inspiration,  the  Lord 
set  a  multitude  of  explorers  to  work  upon  the  monuments 
of  Egypt,  deciphering  the  hieroglyphics  which  had  so  long 
puzzled  the  world,  digging  into  the  mounds  which  had  for 
centuries  covered  the  ruined  palaces  and  cities  of  Persia 
and  Assyria,  and  bringing  to  Europe  ship-loads  of  recovered 
statues,  marbles,  cylinders,  mummies,  obelisks,  papyrii,  cov- 
ered with  all  manner  of  pictures  and  inscriptions,  civil,  re- 
ligious, and  political,  contemporary  with  the  Bible  history, 
and  setting  the  best  scholars  of  Europe  to  decipher  and 
translate  them.  They  are  only,  as  yet,  in  the  middle  of 
their  labors,  but  already  so  much  has  been  discovered  as  to 
warrant  the  assertion  that  before  they  have  finished  they 
will  furnish  full  corroboration  of  all  the  great  outlines  of 
Old  Testament  history. 

Egypt  was  the  first  to  come  forward  in  furnishing  her 
quota  of  commentary  to  the  corroboration  of  the  Books  of 
Moses.  Hengstenberg's  Egypt  and  the  Books  of  Moses^ 
Wilkinson's  Ancient  Egyptians,  and  Osburn's  Monumental 
History  of  Egypt,  furnish  almost  a  commentary  upon  Moses' 
account  of  Egyptian  affairs,  confirming  every  biblical  allu- 
sion to  Egypt  as  historically  correct,  and  revealing  to  us 
even  the  natural  causes  of  the  seven  years  high  Nile  and 
plenteous  harvests;  in  the  overflow  of  the  great  central 
lake  in  Nubia  wearing  away  the  embankment;  and  of  the 
seven  years  subsequent  low  Nile  and  famine,  by  the  drought 
consequent  on  this  immense  drainage.  The  very  titles  of 
Joseph  as,  ''Director  of  the  Full  and  Empty  Irrigating 
Canals,"  "  Steward  of  the  Granaries,"  etc..  etc.,  are  still  to 
be  read  on  his  tomb  at  Sakkarah,*  and  much  more  of  the 
same  sort. 

F.   Newman  ridicules    the  Bible  narrative  of  Shishak's 

*  Osburn's  Monumental  History. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  301 

expedition  against  Rehoboam  as  a  mere  fictitious  embellisli- 
ment  of  an  otherwise  tame  narrative;*  but  Egyptologists, 
like  Stu  irt,  Poole,  and  Brugscli,  have  examined  the  inscrip- 
tion of  Shishak,  at  Karnak,  and  allege  that  it  fully  corrob- 
arates  the  Scripture  history. f 

Some  of  the  most  obscure  portions  of  the  Bible,  which 
have  long  been  stumbling-blocks  to  commentators  and  his- 
torians, are  now  thus  illuminated  by  the  light  of  modern 
discoveries  of  monuments  and  inscriptions  fourvd  in  the 
ruins  of  the  ancient  cities  of  Persia  and  Assyria,  upon 
which  they  in  turn  cast  such  light  as  to  enable  the  discov- 
eries of  Layard  and  Rawlinson  to  assume  an  intelligible 
coherency.  The  tenth  and  eleventh  chapters  of  Genesis 
written  a  thousand  years  before  Herodotus  or  Manetho,  and 
which  Rationalistic  commentators  were  so  long  "unable  to 
verify  by  their  own  consciousness,"  and  which  were  there- 
fore consigned  to  the  realm  of  mythology,  are  now  acknowl- 
edged by  the  first  scholars  and  discoverers  to  stand  at  the 
head  of  the  page  of  reliable  history,  and  to  form  the  basis 
of  all  scientific  ethnography. 

The  diversity  of  languages  among  mankind  seems  not  to 
have  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Greek  philosophers. 
When  modern  inquirers  began  to  investigate  the  matter, 
th«y  were  well-nigh  confounded  by  the  multitude  of  dia- 
lects and  languages.  The  labor  of  three  generations  of 
scholars  has  been  expended  upon  philology,  the  most  ancient 
monument  of  mankind.  And  the  result  is  that  all  the 
various  languages  of  earth  have  at  length  been  classified 
under  three  tongues — the  Shemitic,  the  Aryan,  and  the 
Turanian.  But  this  most  recent  discovery  of  comparative 
philology  wa?  narrated  by  Moses  thirty  centuries  ago,  with 
the  historical  account  of  the  origin  of  the  division  of  the 


*  Hebrew  Monarchy,  160. 

t  Prof.  Rawlinson's  Modern  Skepticism,  285. 


302  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

primeval  family  into  three  separate  colonies,  colonizing  the 
earth  after  their  families  and  after  their  tongues. — Genesis 
X.  32.  The  discovery  of  this  coincidence  fills  Bunsen  with 
astonishment.  "  Comparative  philology,"  he  says,  "  would 
have  been  compelled  to  set  forth  as  a  postulate  the  supposi- 
tion of  some  such  division  of  languages  in  Asia,  especially 
on  the  ground  of  the  relation  of  the  Egyptian  language  to 
the  Shemitic,  even  if  the  Bible  had  not  assured  us  of  the 
truth  of  this  great  historical  event.  It  is  truly  wonderful ; 
it  is  a  matter  of  astonishment;  it  is  more  than  a  mere  as- 
tounding fact  that  something  so  purely  historical,  and  yet 
divinely  fixed — something  so  conformable  to  reason,  and 
yet  not  to  be  conceived  of  as  a  mere  natural  development — 
is  here  related  to  us  out  of  the  oldest  primeval  period,  and 
which  now  for  the  first  time,  through  the  new  science  of 
philology,  has  become  capable  of  being  historically  and 
philosophically  explained." 

The  brief,  yet  definite,  assertions  of  the  Hamitic  origin 
of  the  old  empire  of  Babylon,  and  of  an  Asiatic  Cush  or 
Ethiopia,  which  have  been  so  repeatedly  charged  against  the 
Bible  as  blunders,  even  by  some  profound  scholars,  have 
been  vindicated  by  the  recent  discoveries  in  the  mounds  of 
Chaldea  Proper  of  multitudes  of  inscriptions  in  a  language 
which  Sir  H.  Rawlinson  afiirms  "is  decidedly  Cushite  or 
Ethiopian,"  and  the  modern  languages  to  which  it  makes 
the  nearest  approaches  are  those  of  Southern  Arabia  and 
Abyssinia.  The  old  traditions  have  then  been  confirmed 
by  comparative  philology,  and  both  are  side  lights  to  Scrip- 
ture. *  *  *  "  The  primitive  race  which  bore  sway  in 
Chaldea  Proper  is  demonstrated  to  have  belonged  to  this 
Ethnic  type."* 

"The  conquest  of  Palestine  is  recorded  on  the  annals  of 
Sennacherib,  and  the  cylinder  of   Tiglath-Pileser  describes 


*  Ancient  Monarchies  I.  65. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  303 

his  invasion  of  Palestine.  The  names  of  Jehu,  of  Ama- 
ziah,  of  Hezekiah,  of  Omri,  Ahaz,  and  Uzziah  have  been 
made  out.  The  very  clay  which  sealed  the  treaty  between 
the  kings  of  Judah  and  Assyria,  with  the  impresses  of  their 
joint  seals  upon  it,  is  preserved  in  the  Nineveh  gallery.  The 
library  of  Assurbanipal,  in  twenty  thousand  fragments, 
contains  among  other  scientific  treatises,  such  as  astronomi- 
cal notices,  grammatical  essays,  tables  of  verbs,  genealogies, 
etc.,  an  historico-geographical  account  of  Babylonia  and  the 
surrounding  countries.  As  far  as  these  fragments  have 
been  translated,  the  district  and  tribal  names  given  in  the 
Bible  correspond  very  closely  with  them."* 

But  this  is  not  the  only  illustration  and  confirmation 
which  these  old  Assyrian  monuments  offer  to  the  Sacred 
Writings.  From  the  first  invasion  of  the  Assyrians,  under 
Tiglath-Pilezer,  to  the  restoration  of  Israel  from  Babylon, 
and  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple,  under  Darius,  the  Bible 
history  is  full  of  references  to  the  Assyrian,  Babylonian, 
and  Persian  monarchies,  and  their  affairs  with  Israel  and 
Judah.  And  the  inscribed  tablets,  cylinders,  and  temple 
tablets,  and  statues,  are  full  of  references  which  directly 
or  indirectly  elucidate  and  corroborate  the  Bible  history, 
attesting  to  skeptics  the  truthfulness  of  its  wonderful  nar- 
rative; the  very  stones  of  Nineveh,  and  the  ruined  palaces 
of  Babylon  and  Assyria,  crying  out  in  vindication  of  the 
veracity  of  the  Bible.  Already  so  much  has  been  discov- 
ered as  to  fill  several  volumes,  to  which  we  must  refer  the 
reader  for  details,  f 

One  of  the  alleged  historical  errors  greatly  insisted  on  by 
Eationalistic  commentators  was  the  statement  by  Daniel,  that 
Belshazzar  was  King  of  Babylon  when  it  was  taken  by  the 


*  W.  E,  Cooper,  Secretary  Biblical  Archseological  Society,  in 
Faith  ayid  Free  Thought^  pag6  257. 
t  Rawlinson's  Illustrations  of  Scripture. 


304  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

Medo-Persians,  and  that  he  was  slain  at  the  storming  of  the 
city.  Herodotus  and  Berosus  had  stated  that  Nabonnidus 
was  king,  and  that  he  was  not  in  the  city  then,  but  was 
afterward  taken  prisoner  and  treated  generously  by  Cyrus. 
These  accounts  seemed  contradictory;  and  as  Herodotus 
and  Bero  us  were  generally  esteemed  respectable  historians, 
the  Rationalists  ridicule  Daniel  as  an  erroneous  writer  of 
history.  But  one  of  Sir  H.  Rawlinson's  discoveries  has 
vindicated  the  prophet,  and  also  explained  how  the  histori- 
ans were  truthful  too.  W.  Taylor,  one  of  Rawlinson's  as- 
sistants, discovered  an  inscribed  cylinder  in  Ur  of  the 
Chaldees  containing  an  account  of  the  reign  of  this  very 
Nabonnidus,  which  Sir  Henry  describes  in  a  letter  to  the 
Athenceum  (1854,  page  341)  :  "  The  most  important  facts, 
however,  which  they  disclose  are  that  the  eldest  son  of 
Nabonnidus  was  named  Bel-shar-ezar,  and  that  he  was  ad- 
mitted by  his  father  to  a  share  in  the  government.  This 
name  is  undoubtedly  the  Belshazzar  of  Daniel,  and  thus  fur- 
nishes a  key  to  the  explanation  of  that  great  historical 
problem  which  has  hitherto  defied  solution.  We  can  now 
understand  how  Belshazzar,  as  joint-king  with  his  father, 
may  have  been  Governor  of  Babylon  when  the  city  was  at- 
tacked by  the  combined  forces  of  the  Medes  and  Persians, 
and  may  have  perished  in  the  assault  which  followed ;  while 
Nabonnidus,  leading  a  force  to  the  relief  of  the  place,  was 
defeated,  and  was  obliged  to  take  refuge  in  Borsippa,  capit 
ulating  after  a  short  resistance,  and  being  subsequently  as- 
signed, according  to  Berosus,  to  an  honorable  retirement  in 
Carmania.  A  minute  coincidence  also  is  thus  brought  to 
light,  showing  the  accuracy  of  the  inspired  historian  in  one 
of  the  details  of  his  narrative.  Belshazzar  elevates  him 
to  the  position  of  Grand  Vizier,  or  Prime  Minister,  which, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  would  be  the  second  place  of 
dignity  in  the  empire.  But  Daniel  represents  the  king  as 
raising   him  to  the  third  place,  which  we  now   see  to  be 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  305 

strictly  correct,  since  Belshazzar  himself  was  the  second  in 
rank.  Thus  the  weapons  discharged  against  the  Bible  ever 
recoil  upon  the  heads  of  its  assailants. 

Not  only  among  the  monuments  of  the  great  historic  na- 
tions do  we  now  discover  corroborations  of  Scripture,  the 
records  and  monuments  of  even  obscure  nations  are  most 
strangely  turning  up  and  being  discovered,  after  lying  un- 
noticed for  centuries,  as  if  God  had  reserved  their  testi- 
mony for  the  time  when  it  would  be  needed  and  valued. 
The  Bible  does  not  refer  to  the  history  of  the  surrounding 
nations,  save  in  connection  with  their  relations  to  Israel ; 
but  it  is  surprising  to  see  how  many  of  these  references  are 
corroborated  by  recent  discoveries.  The  Bible,  for  instance, 
describes'i^  Omri  as  establishing  a  kingdom  with  his  capital 
at  Samaria,  and  he  and  his  son,  Ahab,  making  war  on  Mesha, 
King  of  Moab,  conquering  him  and  making  him  pay  an 
annual  tribute  of  one  hundred  thousand  lambs  and  one 
hundred  thousand  rams,  with  the  wool.  But  it  came  to 
pass  that  when  Ahab  was  dead  that  the  King  of  Moab  re- 
belled against  the  King  of  Israel. 

Now  amid  the  perpetual  wars  of  the  petty  kingdoms  of 
Asia,  and  after  the  utter  extirpation  of  the  Moabitish  na- 
tion, the  chances  were  millions  to  one  against  our  recover- 
ing any  historical  monuments  whatever  of  that  people ;  and 
almost  infinite  against  recovering  any  which  should  coincide 
with  the  half  dozen  allusions  to  them  in  the  Bible.  But 
Mr.  Klein  di-jcovcred  in  the  ruins  of  Dibon,  one  of  the  an- 
cient cities  of  Moab,  and  Capt.  Warren  recovered,  the  frag- 
ments of  the  now  famous  Moabite  Stone,  on  which,  in  the 
old  Samaritan  characters,  we  read:  "I,  Mesha,  son  of  Jobin, 
King  of  Moab.  My  father  reigned  over  Moab  thirty  years, 
and  I  reigned  after  my  father.  I  erected  this  altar  unto 
Chemosh,  who  granted  me  victory  over  mine  enemies,  the 

*  2  Kings,  chap.  iv.    2  Chronicles,  chap.  xx. 
20 


306  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

people  of  Omri,  King  of  Israel,  who,  together  with  his  son, 
Ahab,  oppressed  Moab  a  long  time — even  forty  years,"*  etc. 

But  space  forbids  even  the  enumeration  of  the  corobora- 
tions  of  Bible  history  from  the  days  of  Abraham  to  the  time 
of  the  first  census  of  the  Roman  Empire,  when  Cyrenius 
was  Governor  of  Syria  the  second  time.  In  every  instance 
where  its  monuments  have  spoken  of  biblical  affairs  they 
have  confirmed  the  accuracy  of  the  Bible  history.  The 
history  of  Great  Britain,  or  of  the  United  States,  is  not 
more  authentic  than,  and  not  so  accurate  as,  the  long  line  of 
history  recorded  in  the  Bible.  No  important  error  has 
been  proven  in  any  of  its  historical  statements  of  the 
world's  history  for  forty  centuries.  This  accuracy  con- 
trasted with  the  acknowledged  errors  of  the  best  histori- 
ans, is  proof  to  every  candid  mind  of  divine  direction  and 
help  to  the  sacred  writers. 

Sweeping  away,  then,  these  cobwebs,  we  open  the  volume 
and  form  our  opinion  of  its  genuineness  and  authenticity 
from  its  own  internal  evidences — its  nature  and  contents — 
and  from  the  way  in  which  it  was  used  by  the  Hebrew  nation. 

It  is  important  at  the  outset  to  know  how  long  these  doc- 
uments have  undoubtedly  existed.  No  one  denies  that 
they  were  in  existence  eighteen  hundred  years  ago.  Indeed, 
the  first  literary  attack  on  them  which  has  been  recorded 
was  made  about  that  time;  and  Josephus'  defense  of  the 
Scriptures  against  Apion  still  exists.  The  very  same  writ- 
ings which  the  Protestant  churches  now  acknowledge  as 
canonical,  and  none  other,  were  then  acknowledged  to  be 
of  divine  authority  by  the  Jews.  It  is  true  they  bound 
their  Bibles  difierently  from  ours,  but  the  contents  were 
the  very  same.  They  made  up  their  parchments  of  the 
thirty  nine  books  in  twenty-two  rolls  or  volumes,  one  for 
every  letter  of  their  alphabet;  putting  Judges  and  Ruth, 

*  Recovery  of  Jerusalem,  page  496,  Gunaberg's  Essay. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  307 

the  two  books  of  Samuel,  the  two  books  of  Kings,  the  two 
books  of  Chronicles,  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  Jeremiah's  Proph- 
ecy and  Lamentations,  and  the  twelve  minor  prophets,  in 
•ne  volume  respectively.  They  also  distinguished  the  five 
books  of  Moses  as.  The  Law;  the  Psalms,  Proverbs,  Eccle- 
siastes,  and  Song  of  Solomon. as.  The  Psalms;  and  all  the 
remainder  as.  The  Prophets.^  Moreover,  it  is  well  known 
that  two  hundred  and  eighty -two  years  before  the  Christian 
era,  these  writings  were  translated  into  Greek  and  widely 
circulated  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  They  were,  in  fact, 
not  only  popular,  but  received  as  of  divine  authority  by  the 
Jews  at  that  time,  read  in  their  synagogues  in  public  wor- 
ship, and  regarded  with  sacred  reverence.  How  did  they 
come  to  receive  them  in  this  manner? 

These  writings  were  not  only  acknowledged  by  the  Jews ; 
their  bitterest  enemies— the  Samaritans — owned  the  divine 
authority  of  the  five  books  of  Moses,  and  preserve  an  ancient 
copy  of  them,  diflfering  in  no  essential  particular  from  the 
Hebrew  version,  to  this  day.  The  Samaritans  always  bore 
to  the  Hebrews  such  a  relation  as  Mohammedans  do  to 
Christians,  and  the  Hebrews  returned  the  grudge  with  in- 
terest: "For  the  Jews  have  no  dealings  with  the  Samari- 
tans." These  heathen  Babylonians,  four  centuries  or  more 
before  the  Christian  era,  were  somehow  induced  to  receive 
the  Pentateuch  as  of  divine  authority,  and  to  frame  some 
sort  of  religion  upon  it.  Their  enmity  to  the  Jews  is  con- 
clusive proof  that,  since  that  time,  neither  Jews  nor  Samar- 
itans have  altered  the  text;  else  the  manuscripts  would 
show  the  discrepancy. 

These  bo'oks  are  not  such  as  any  person  would  forge  to 
gain  popularity,  or  to  make  money  by.  There  is  nothing 
in  them  to  bribe  the  good  opinion  of  influential  people,  or 

*  Josephus  against  Api>n,  Book  I.  Sect.  8.  Home's  Intro- 
duction Chap.  ii.  Sect.  1. 


308  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

catch  tlie  favor  of  the  multitude.  On  the  contrary,  their 
stern  severity,  and  unsparing  denunciation  of  popular  vice 
and  profitable  sin  must  have  secured  their  rejection  by  the 
Jewish  people,  had  they  not  been  constrained  by  undeni- 
able evidence  to  acknowledge  their  divine  authority  They 
set  out  with  the  assertion  of  the  divine  authority  of  the 
law  of  Moses,  and  everywhere  sharply  reprove  princes, 
priests,  and  people  for  breaking  it.  The  prophets,  so  far  from 
seeking  popularity,  are  foolhardy  enough  to  denounce  the 
bonnets,  hoops,  and  flounces  of  the  ladies,  and  to  cry.  Woe ! 
against  the  regular  business  of  the  most  respectable  note- 
shavers,*  to  croak  against  the  march  of  intellect,  and  shake 
public  confidence  in  the  prosperity  of  their  great  country,f 
to  ally  themselves  with  fanatic  abolitionists,  and  introduce 
agitating  political  questions  into  the  pulpit;  crying.  Woe  to 
him  that  useth  his  neighbor's  service  without  wages,  and  giv- 
eth  him  not  for  his  work  |  To  crown  all,  they  organized 
abolition  clubs  to  procure  immediate  emancipation,  and  pub- 
lished incendiary  proclamations  in  the  cities  of  the  slave- 
holders,§  and,  strange  to  say,  they  were  allowed  to  escape 
■with  their  lives ;  and  their  writings  were  held  sacred  by  the 
children  of  those  very  men  and  women  they  so  unsparingly 
denounced ;  a  conclusive  proof  that  the  calamities  they  pre- 
dicted had  compelled  them  to  acknowledge  these  prophets 
as  the  heralds  of  God.  The  proof  must  have  been  con- 
clusive, indeed,  which  compelled  the  Jews  to  acknowledge 
the  writings  of  the  prophets  as  sacred. 

Another  very  striking  feature  of  these  writings  is,  their 
mutual  connection  with  each  other.     They  were  written  at 

*  Isaiah,  chap.  iii.  16.     Ezekiel,  chap,  xviii.  12. 
t  Jeremiah,  chaps,  xxi.,  and  xxii.  16. 
t  Jeremiah,  chap.  xxii.  13. 
§  Jeremiah,  chap,  xxxiv. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  309 

various  intervals,  during  a  period  of  a  thousand  years'  dura- 
tion, by  shepherds  and  kings,  by  prophets  and  priests,  by 
governors  of  States  and  gatherers  of  sycamore  fruit;  in 
deserts  and  in  palaces,  in  camps  and  in  cities,  in  Egypt  and 
Syria,  in  Arabia  and  Babylon ;  under  the  iron  heel  of  des- 
potic oppression,  and  amid  the  liberty  of  the  most  demo- 
cratic republic  the  world  ever  saw ;  yet,  amid  all  this  vari- 
ety of  authorship,  and  change  of  circumstances,  and  lapse 
of  time,  they  ever  hold  to  one  great  theme,  always  assert 
the  same  great  principles,  and  perpetually  claim  connection 
with  the  writers  who  have  preceded  them.  There  is  noth- 
ing like  this  in  the  histories  of  other  nations.  Two  centu- 
ries will  work  such  changes  of  opinion,  that  you  can  not 
find  nowadays  any  historian  who  approves  the  sentiments 
of  Pepys  or  Clarendon,  whatever  use  he  may  make  of  their 
facts.  But  the  historians  of  the  Bible  not  only  refer  to 
their  predecessors'  writings,  but  refer  to  them  as  of  ac- 
knowledged divine  authority.  Thus  the  very  latest  of  these 
books  gives  the  weight  of  its  testimony  to  the  first — ^^And 
iliey  set  the  priests  in  their  divisions,  and  the  Levites  in  their 
courses  for  the  service  of  God,  which  is  at  Jerusalem,  as  il 
is  written  in  the  book  of  Moses.' ^^  And  Daniel  spake  of  the 
books  of  Moses  as  well  known  when  he  says,  "  Therefore  the 
curse  is  poured  upon  us,  and  the  oath  that  is  written  in  the 
law  of  Moses  the  servant  of  God.^'f  The  shortest  book  in 
the  Old  Testament — the  prophecy  of  Obadiah,  consisting 
only  of  twenty  sentences — contains  twenty-five  allusions  to 
the  preceding  histories  and  laws.  The  last  of  the  prophets 
shuts  up  the  volume  with  a  command  to  ^'■Remember  the  law 
of  Moses.''  In  fact,  just  as  the  epistles  prove  the  existence 
and  acknowledged  authority  of  the  gospels;  so  do  the 
prophets  prove  the  existence  and  acknowledged  authority  of 


•••  Ezra,  chap.  vi.  18. 
t  Daniel,  chap.  ix.  11. 


310  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

the  law  of  Moses.  They  were  acknowledged  not  merely  by 
one  generation  of  the  Jewish  people,  but  by  the  nation  dur- 
ing the  whole  period  of  its  national  existence ;  and  they  are 
of  such  a  character,  that  they  must  then,  and  now,  be  taken 
as  one  whole — all  accepted,  or  all  rejected  together. 

The  reader  of  the  Old  Testament  will  speedily  find  that 
these  writings  are  not  merely  a  connected  history  of  the 
nation,  of  great  general  interest,  like  Bancroft's  or  Macau- 
lay's,  but  of  no  such  special  interest  to  any  individual  as  to 
force  him,  by  a  sense  of  self-interest,  or  the  danger  of  loss 
of  liberty  or  property,  to  correct  their  errors.  On  the  con- 
trary, every  farmer  in  Palestine  was  deeply  concerned  in 
the  truth  and  accuracy  of  the  Bible;  for  it  contained  not 
only  the  general  boundaries  of  the  country,  and  of  the  par- 
ticular tribes,  like  the  survey  of  the  Maine  boundary,  or 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  but  it  delineated  particular  es- 
tates also,  and  was,  in  fact,  the  report  of  the  Surveyor- 
General,  deposited  in  the  county  court  for  reference,  in  case 
of  any  litigation  about  sale  or  inheritance  of  property.* 
The  genealogies  of  the  tribes  and  families  were  also  pre- 
served in  these  writings ;  and  on  the  authenticity  and  cor- 
rectness of  these  records,  the  inheritance  of  every  farm  in 
the  land  depended ;  for  as  no  lease  ran  more  than  fifty  years, 
every  farm  returned  to  the  heirs  of  the  original  settler  at 
the  year  of  jubilee.f  Thus  every  Jewish  farmer  had  a  di- 
rect interest  in  these  sacred  records;  and  it  would  be  just 
as  hard  to  forge  records  for  the  county  courts  of  Ohio,  and 
pass  them  off  upon  the  citizens  as  genuine,  and  plead  them 
in  the  courts  as  valid,  as  to  impose  at  first,  or  falsify  after- 
ward, the  records  of  the  commonwealth  of  Israel. 

This  will  appear  more  clearly  when  we  consider  that 
they  contained  also  the  laws  of  the  land — the  Constitution 


*  Joshua,  chaps,  xiii.-xix. 

1 1  Cbronicles,  chaps,  i.-ix.    Leviticus,  chap.  xxv. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  311 

of  the  United  States  of  Israel,  with  the  statutes  at  large — 
according  to  which  every  house,  and  farm,  and  garden  in 
the  whole  country  was  possessed,  every  court  of  justice  was 
guided,-'"^  every  election  was  held,  from  the  election  of  a 
petty  constable,  to  that  of  Governor  of  the  State,f  and  the 
militia  enrolled,  mustered,  officered,  and  called  out  to  the 
field  of  battle. J  These  laws  prescribed  the  way  in  which 
every  house  must  be  built,  regulated  the  weaver  in  weaving 
his  cloth,  and  the  tailor  in  making  it,  and  the  cooking  of 
every  breakfast,  dinner  and  supper  eaten  by  an  Israelite 
over  the  world,  from  that  day  to  this.§  Now,  let  any  one 
who  thinks  it  would  be  an  easy  matter  to  forge  such  a  series 
of  documents,  and  get  people  to  receive  and  obey  them,  try 
his  hand  in  making  a  volume  of  Acts  of  Assembly,  and 
passing  it  off  upon  the  people  of  Ohio  for  genuine.  Let 
him  bring  an  action  into  one  of  the  courts,  and  persuade 
the  judges  to  give  a  decision  in  his  favor,  upon  the  strength 
of  his  forged  or  falsified  statutes,  and  then  he  may  hope  to 
convince  us  that  the  laws  of  Moses  are  simply  a  collection 
of  religious  tracts,  which  came  to  be  held  sacred  through 
lapse  of  time,  nobody  knows  how  or  why. 

Nor  were  these  laws,  and  the  usages  thus  established, 
common,  and  such  as  the  people  would  be  ready  easily  to 
adopt.  On  the  contrary,  Moses  repeatedly  asserts,  and  all 
ancient  history  shows,  that  they  were  quite  peculiar  to  the 
Hebrew  people  then ;  and  they  are  to  this  day  confined  to 
the  republics  which,  like  our  own,  have  drawn  their  ideas 
from  the  Bible.  It  is  enough  to  name  the  common  law  and 
trial  by  jury;  the  armed  nation;  the  right  of  free  public 
assembly,  free  speech,  free  passport,  and  free  trade;  the 
election  of  civil,  judicial,  and  military  officers  by  universal 

*  Exodus,  chap.  xxi.  6.     Deuteronomy,  chap.  i.  16;  chap.  xix. 

t  Exodus,  chap,  xviii.  21. 

X  Deuteronomy,  chap.  xx.     Numbers,  chap.  x.  9. 

g  Deuteronomy,  chap.  xxii.  8,  11,  12.     Leviticus,  chap.  xi. 


312  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

suffrage;  the  division  of  the  land  in  fee-simple  among  the 
whole  people ;  the  rights  of  women  to  hold  real  estate  in 
their  own  right,  to  speak  in  public  assemblies,  and  to  pro- 
phetic functions ;  and  the  support  of  religion  by  the  volun- 
tary offerings  of  the  people. 

Our  own  republic  resembles  Israel  as  a  daughter  her 
mother.  The  land  of  liberty  was  the  Bible  country.  The 
first  republic  which  the  world  ever  saw  was  designed  by 
Almighty  God,  and  revealed  to  the  world  in  the  Bible,  and 
by  the  example  of  the  United  States  of  Israel.  From  that 
pattern  our  forefathers  copied  all  the  grand  features  of  our 
glorious  republic — the  equitable  distribution  of  the  land,  in 
fee-simple,  among  the  people;  securing  them,  by  the  jubi- 
lee, against  the  introduction  of  feudal  tenure,  and  landlord- 
ism ;  the  abolition  of  a  standing  army,  and  the  defense  of 
the  country  by  the  militia ;  the  election  of  all  ofl&eers,  civil 
and  military,  from  the  town  constable,  and  the  justice  of 
the  peace,  up  to  the  president  of  the  republic,  the  Lord 
Jehovah  himself,  by  universal  suffrage — and  the  Federal 
Union  of  the  twelve  tribes  into  one  nation,  with  township, 
county,  and  state  governments,  with  a  common  law,  com- 
mon schools,  and  the  equality  of  all  citizens  before  the  law ; 
the  right  of  naturalization ;  sanitary  and  social  institutions, 
such  as  modern  philanthropists  are  only  beginning  to  dream 
of,  for  the  elevation  of  the  people;  and  all  this  avowedly 
held  in  trust  for  all  mankind,  as  a  fountain  of  blessings  for 
all  the  families  of  the  earth.  No  such  ideas  of  liberty, 
equality,  and  fraternity,  ever  existed  among  the  wisest 
heathen  nations  —  the  Egyptians,  Persians,  Greeks,  or 
Romans.  On  the  face  of  the  whole  earth  there  never  was, 
and  there  is  not  to-day,  a  free  republic  outside  of  the  light 
and  liberty  of  the  Bible.  The  so-called  republics  of  Athens 
and  Rome  were  hideous  aristocracies,  and  tyrannies.  From 
the  Bible  the  men  of  the  Continental  Congress  learned  the 
grand  truth,  which   they  emblazoned  on  the  forefront  of 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  313 

their  immortal  Declaration  of  Independence,  "  That  all  men 
are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights 
to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness;"  thus  plant- 
ing the  rights  of  man  upon  the  only  immovable  basis^the 
throne  of  the  eternal  God. 

But  there  were  other  features  of  the  Mosaic  legislation 
so  far  in  advance  of  the  ideas  of  our  modern  Materialism  as 
not  to  have  been  even  yet  suggested  in  our  social  congresses, 
nor  even  dreamt  of  by  our  most  advanced  Christian  philan- 
thropists, in  their  endeavors  after  the  elevation  of  the 
masses.  Moses'  idea  was  the  prevention  of  pauperism,  and 
of  the  conflict  between  labor  and  capital,  and  of  the  gam- 
bling speculating  fever,  and  the  formation  of  an  independent, 
intelligent,  joyous,  religious,  healthy,  and  thrifty  people, 
well-bred,  well-fed,  well-lodged,  able  to  fight  their  foes  on 
the  battle-field,  to  reap  their  ridge  on  the  harvest-field,  to 
enjoy  the  blessings  of  healthy  families,  and  to  rejoice  before 
the  Lord.  A  volume  would  be  needed  to  develop  the  social 
bearings  of  the  laws  of  the  Hebrews.  We  can  only  suggest 
for  consideration  the  laws  regarding  inalienability  of  the 
homestead,  and  the  bankrupt  law;  the  laws  of  marriage  and 
inheritance ;  the  laws  of  servitude  and  wages ;  the  sanitary 
laws  regarding  building,  clothing,  bathing,  eating,  and  con- 
tagion ;  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  animals ;  the  disper- 
sion of  the  educated  class;  and  the  three  great  national 
festivals,  during  which  the  whole  people  were  released  from 
the  labors  of  the  field,  and  of  the  kitchen,  and  enjoyed 
during  the  eight  summer  days  of  each  picnic  such  an  ex- 
citement of  social  enjoyment,  religious  fervor,  and  political 
patriotism,  as  modern  Christendom  anticipates  in  the  millen- 
nium, but  which  neither  Church  nor  State  has,  as  yet,  syste- 
matically attempted  to  nurture. 

That  the  Hebrews  did  not  obey  the  law,  and  so  did  not 
enjoy  the  happiness  obedience  would  have  secured,  is  only 
what  God   foresaw,  and  foretold   repeatedly,  with  sol«mn 


314  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

warning  of  the  disastrous  degradation  to  which  disobedience 
to  God's  hiws  must  ever  reduce  man.  Nevertheless,  even 
their  very  imperfect  conformity  to  these  institutions  gave 
them  such  superiority  of  blood  and  breeding  to  their  un- 
godly neighbors,  that  they  have  survived  the  most  powerful 
nations,  and,  in  spite  of  dispersion,  exile,  disfranchisement, 
and  persecution,  they  exist  as  a  distinct  people,  superior  in- 
tellectually, commercially,  and  morally  to  all  the  heathen 
nations  at  this  day.  How  much  higher  had  been  their  po- 
sition ha  I  they  fully  obeyed  the  law. 

Our  arg  iment  is,  that  this  law  of  liberty,  equality,  fra- 
ternity, and  religion,  was  worthy  of  our  Father  in  heaven, 
and  a  seed  of  blessing  to  all  the  families  of  the  earth. 

To  a  Je'V  living  before  the  coming  of  Christ,  the  unani- 
mous testimony  of  his  nation,  confirmed  by  all  the  com- 
memorative observances  of  the  sacrifices,  the  passover, 
the  Sabbath,  and  the  jubilee,  by  the  reading  of  the  law  and 
the  prophets,  and  the  singing  of  the  historical  psalms  in 
the  temple  and  the  synagogues,  by  the  execution  of  the  laws 
of  Moses  in  the  courts,  and  by  the  very  existence  of  his 
nation  as  a  distinct  people,  separate  from  all  the  other  na- 
tions— could  leave  no  doubt  that  laws  so  peculiar  and  benef- 
icent must  have  been  enacted  by  a  wisdom  superior  to  that 
of  man,  and  their  observance  imposed  by  divine  authority ; 
nor  that  the  miracles  by  which  these  laws  were  authenti- 
cated, and  the  national  existence  of  the  people  of  Israel 
was  secured,  were  genuine,  and  divine.  The  chain  of  his- 
torical and  internal  evidence  is  too  strong  to  be  broken, 
while  the  Jewish  nation  exists. 

But  yet  this  historical  and  internal  evidence  of  the  au- 
thority of  the  Old  Testament  is  but  the  smallest  part  of 
that  which  we  possess,  who  have  the  testimony  of  Christ  on 
this  sub'ect.  For  this  testimony  removes  the  question  from 
the  mists  of  antiquity,  and  even  from  the  debatable  ground 
of  historij   certainty,  and   resolves   the  whole   process  of 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  315 

searching  for,  and  comparing  and  examining  a  host  of  sec- 
ond-hand witnesses,  into  the  easy  and  certain  one  of  hear- 
ing the  Author  himself  say,  whether  he  acknowledges  this 
Book  to  be  his  or  not.  Christians  receive  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  the  Word  of  God,  because  Jesus  says  so. 

Now,  reader,  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  you 
should  stop  just  here,  and  give  a  plain,  confident*answer  to 
these  questions :  Dost  thou  believe  upon  the  Son  of  God  ? 
Is  Jesus  the  Messiah  of  whom  Moses  in  the  law,  and  the 
prophets,  did  write?  Are  you  perfectly  satisfied  of  the 
truth  of  the  New  Testament,  and  willing  to  venture  your 
eternal  salvation  upon  the  words  of  Christ  contained  in  it  ? 

For,  if  not,  of  what  use  is  it  for  you  to  trouble  yourself 
about  the  Old  Testament?  You  might  as  well  waste  your 
time  in  examining  the  genuineness  of  the  bills  of  a  broken 
bank ;  they  may  be  genuine  or  they  may  be  forgeries ;  but 
who  cares?  They  will  never  be  paid.  If  the  first  promises 
of  the  bank  of  heaven,  to  send  the  Messiah  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  ago,  have  been  fulfilled,  its  other  paper  may  be 
also  valuable ;  if  not,  it  must  be  equally  worthless.  If  the 
New  Testament  be  not  of  divine  authority,  you  may  place 
the  prophets  on  the  same  shelf  with  the  Poems  of  Ossian ; 
and  then  follows  the  serious  consequence,  that  there  is  not 
a  grain  of  hope  left  for  you  or  for  any  man  on  earth.  If 
Jesus  be  indeed  an  Almighty  Savior,  and  if  he  has  indeed 
risen  from  the  dead,  then,  through  the  power  of  his  mighty 
love,  your  filthy  soul  may  be  washed  from  its  sins,  and  your 
mortal  body  may  be  raised  from  the  rottenness  of  the  grave. 
But  if  Christ  be  not  risen,  you  are  yet  in  your  sins.  You 
have  no  notion  that  any  of  the  gods  of  the  heathen,  or  the 
precepts  of  the  Koran,  can  purify  your  heart.  You  know 
well  that  Infidelity  never  sanctified  any  of  your  comrades. 
Conscience  tells  you  that  you  are  not  any  better  now  than 
you  were  a  year  ago,  but  worse.  You  are  yet  in  your  sins ; 
and  in  them  you  must  live  and  die !     Aye,  while  your  ini- 


316  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS, 

mortal  soul  lives,  while  the  laws  of  human  nature  continue, 
you  must  carry  those  brands  of  infamy  on  your  character, 
and  daily  progress  from  bad  to  worse ;  sinking  deeper  and 
deeper  in  the  contempt  of  all  intelligent  beings ;  and,  were 
there  no  other  avenger,  in  the  remorse  and  despair  of  your 
own  mind,  you  must  experience  the  horrors  of  perdition. 
Jesus,  aWe  to  save  to  the  uttermost,  all  that  come  unto  God 
by  him,  is  your  only  hope.  There  is  none  other  name  given 
under  heaven  among  men  whereby  we  must  be  saved.  If 
his  gospel  be  true,  you  may  be  saved ;  if  it  is  false,  you  must 
be  damned. 

If  you  have  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  of  the  truth  of  the 
New  Testament,  go  over  the  subject  again;  re-read  the  for- 
mer chapters  of  this  book ;  pray  to  God  for  light  and  truth ; 
above  all,  read  the  Book  again  and  again ;  and  if,  in  your 
case,  as  in  that  of  one  of  the  most  famous  teachers  of  Ger- 
man Neology — De  Wette — the  careful  study  of  the  New 
Testament  impels  you  to  rush  through  all  the  mists  of  doubt 
to  the  higher  standpoint  of  a  lofty  faith,  and  the  sunshine 
of  real  religion;  and  if  with  him  you  can  now  say,  "Only 
this  one  thing  I  know,  that  in  no  other  name  is  there  salva- 
tion than  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  the  crucified,  and 
that  for  humanity  there  is  nothing  higher  than  the  incarna- 
tion of  Deity  set  before  ua  in  him,  and  the  kingdom  of  God 
established  by  him,"*  you  may  then  go  on  with  your  inquiry 
into  the  divine  authority  of  the  Old  Testament.  With  the 
Master  himself  before  you,  the  Author,  the  Inspirer,  by 
whom,  and  for  whom,  the  prophets  spake,  and  to  whom  all 
the  Scriptures  point,  you  will  not  think  of  wasting  time  in 
examining  second  hand  evidence;  but  go  direct  to  Jesus 
himself  His  testimony  will  not  be  merely  so  much  addi- 
tional testimony — another  candle  added  to  the  chandelier  by 
whose  light  you  have  perused  the  evidences  of  the  Scrip- 


*  Preface  to  Exposition  of  the  Apocalypse. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  317 

tures ;  it  will  shine  out  on  your  soul  as  the  light  of  the  Sun 
of  Righteousness  with  healing  on  his  wings.  Every  word 
from  his  lips  will  awaken  in  your  heart  the  voice  from 
heaven,  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son.  Hear  him."  What  saith 
Christ,  then,  respecting  the  Old  Testament? 

The  moment  you  open  the  New  Testament  to  make  this 
inquiry,  you  are  met  by  a  reference  to  the  Old.  "The  book 
of  the  generation  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  David,  the  Son 
of  Abraham,"  is  its  formal  title;  and  the  most  cursory  pe- 
rusal tells  you  that  you  have  taken  up,  not  a  separate  and 
independent  work,_which  you  can  profitably  peruse  and  under- 
stand without  much  reference  to  some  foregoing  volumes — as 
one  might  read  Abbott's  Life  of  Napoleon  without  needing  at 
the  same  time  to  study  the  History  of  the  Crusades — but 
that  you  have  taken  up  a  continuation  of  some  former  work — 
the  last  volume  in  fact  of  the  Old  Testament — and  that  you 
can  not  understand  even  the  first  chapter  without  a  careful 
reading  of  the  foregoing  volumes.  Before  you  have  finished 
the  first  chapter  you  meet  with  the  most  unequivocal  asser- 
tion of  the  harmony  of  the  gospels  and  the  prophecies,  and 
of  the  divine  authority  of  both — "Now  all  this  was  done 
that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken  of  the  Lord  by 
the  prophet,"  etc.  The  whole  tenor  of  the  New  Testament 
corresponds  to  this  beginning,  teaching  that  the  birth,  doc- 
trine, miracles,  life,  death,  resurrection,  ascension,  and  sec- 
ond coming  of  the  Lord,  are  the  fulfillments  of  the  Old 
Testament  promises  and  prophecies ;  of  which  no  less  than 
a  hundred  and  thirty-nine  are  expressly  quoted,  beginning 
with  Moses  and  ending  with  Malachi. 

We  can  not  explain  this  by  saying,  with  the  mythical 
school  of  interpreters,  that  this  was  merely  the  opinion  of 
the  writers  of  the  gospels  and  of  the  Jews  of  their  age; 
whose  longings  for  the  Messiah  led  them  to  imagine  some 
curious  coincidences  between  the  events  of  Christ's  life  and 
the  utterances  of  these  ancient  oracles  to  be  ready  fulfill- 


318  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

ments;  and  that  Christ  did  not  deem  it  needfal  in  all  cases 
to  undeeeive  them.  For  to  suppo  ;e  that  Christ — the  Truth 
— would  sanction  or  connive  at  any  such  sacrilegious  decep- 
tion, is  at  once  to  deprive  him,  not  only  of  his  divine  char- 
acter, but  of  all  claim  to  common  honesty.  So  far  from  the 
Jews  longing  for  any  such  events  as  those  which  fulfilled  the 
prophecies,  they  despised  the  Messiah  in  whom  they  were 
fulfilled,  and  refused  to  believe  in  him;  and  his  disciples 
were  as  far  from  the  gospel  ideal  of  the  Messiah,  when  Jesus 
needed  to  reproach  them  with,  "6?  fooh^  and  slow  of  heart 
to  believe  all  that  the  prophets  have  spoken.'*'-^  It  was  not 
the  Jews,  nor  yet  the  disciples,  but  the  Lord  himself  who 
perpetually  insisted  on  the  divine  authority  of  the  Old 
Testament  as  the  Word  of  his  Father,  and  the  sufficient  at- 
testation of  his  own  divine  character,  after  this  manner: 
"Ye  have  not  his  word  abiding  in  you;  fo^  whom,  he  hath 
sent,  him  ye  believe  not  Search  the  Scriptures;  for  in  them 
ye  think  ye  have  eternal  life :  and  they  are  they  which  testify 
of  me.  *  *  *  Had  ye  believed  Moses,  ye  would  have  be- 
lieved me :  for  he  wrote  of  me.  But  if  ye  believe  not  his 
writings,  how  shall  ye  believe  my  words? '^f 

His  first  recorded  sermon  contains  a  remarkable  and  sol- 
emn attestation  to  the  divine  authority  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  of  his  own  relation  to  it  as  its  substance  and  sup- 
porter. "  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the  law,  and 
the  prophets:  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfill.  For 
verily  I  say  unto  you.  Till  heaven  and  earth  pass,  one  jot  or 
one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass  from  the  law,  till  all  be  ful- 
filled.X  The  whole  of  this  discourse  is  an  exposition  of 
the  true  principles  of  the  Old  Testament,  stripping  off  the 
rubbish  by  which  tradition  had  made  void  the  law  of  God, 
and  enforcing  its  precepts  by  the  sanction  of  his  divine  au- 

*  Luke,  chap.  xxiv.  25. 

t  John,  chap.  v.  38,  39,  46,  47. 

X  Matthew,  chap.  v.  17,  18. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  319 

thority.  And  in  one  of  his  last  discourses  after  his  resur- 
rection :  ^^ Beginning  at  Moses,  and  the  prophets,  he  expounded 
unto  them  in  all  the  Scriptures  the  things  concerning  himself. 
*  *  *  And  he  said  unto  them,  These  are  the  words 
which  I  spake  unto  you,  while  I  was  yit  with  you,  that  all 
things  must  he  fulfilled  which  were  written  in  the  law  of 
Moses,  and  in  the  prophets,  and  in  the  psalms,  concerning 
me.  Then  opened  he  their  understanding,  that  they  might 
understand  the  Scriptures  "* 

In  this  distinct  enumeration  of  the  whole  of  the  Scrip- 
tures of  the  Old  Testament;  in  the  assertion  that  they  all 
treated  of  him,  and  that  their  principal  predictions  were 
fulfilled  in  him ;  and  in  his  bestowal  of  divine  illumination 
to  enable  them  to  understand  these  divine  oracles — we  have 
such  an  indorsement  of  their  character  by  the  Truth  him- 
self, as  must  command  the  faith  and  obedience  of  every  be- 
liever in  him.  Had  no  objections  been  raised  against  par- 
ticular doctrines  or  features  of  the  Old  Testament,  we 
should  stop  here ;  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  attestations 
to  the  truth  of  its  history,  given  by  the  continual  refer- 
ences, and  to  the  authority  of  its  precepts,  by  the  solemn 
formal  declarations  of  the  Son  of  God.  But  some  popular 
objections  to  its  completeness  and  perfection  demand  a  brief 
notice. 

1.  The  general  character  of  the  Old  Testament  being 
then  ascertained  beyond  doubt,  our  first  inquiry  must  be  as 
to  the  integrity  and  completeness  of  the  collection.  For  it 
is  manifest  that  their  divine  authority  being  admitted,  any 
attempt  to  add  to  them  any  human  writings,  or  to  take 
away  those  which  were  from  God,  would  be  a  crime  so  seri- 
ous in  its  consequences,  that  it  could  not  escape  the  notice 
of  him  who  severely  rebuked  even  the  verbal  traditions  by 
which  the  Jews  made  void  the  law  of  God.     Now  we  are 


Luke,  chap.  xxiv.  throughout. 


320  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

told  by  some  that  a  great  many  inspired  books  have  been 
lost;  and  they  enumerate  the  prophecy  of  Enoch;  the 
book  of  the  Wars  of  the  Lord ;  the  book  of  Joshua ;  the 
book  of  Iddo  the  seer;  the  book  of  Nathan  the  prophet; 
the  acts  of  Rehoboam ;  the  book  of  Jehu,  the  son  of  Han- 
ani ;  and  the  five  books  of  Solomon,  on  trees,  beasts,  fowls, 
serpents,  and  fishes ;  which  are  alluded  to  in  the  Bible. 

If  the  case  were  so,  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  objection 
could  be  raised  against  the  divine  authority  of  the  books 
we  have,  because  of  the  divine  aiithority  of  those  we  have 
not ;  for  it  is  not  supposed  that  one  divinely  inspired  book 
would  contradict  another.  Nor  yet  can  we  see  how  the  loss 
of  these  books  should  disprove  their  inspiration,  much  less 
the  inspiration  of  those  which  remain,  any  more  than  the 
want  of  a  record  of  the  multitude  of  words  and  works  of 
Jesus  himself  which  were  never  committed  to  writing,* 
should  be  an  argument  against  the  divine  authority  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  will  hardly  be  asserted  that  God 
is  bound  to  reveal  to  us  everything  that  the  human  race 
ever  did,  and  to  preserve  such  records  through  all  time,  or 
lose  his  right  to  demand  our  obedience  to  a  plain  revelation 
of  his  will ;  or  that  we  do  well  to  neglect  the  salvation  of 
our  own  souls  until  we  obtain  an  infallible  knowledge  of  the 
acts  of  Rehoboam. 

But  there  is  not  the  shadow  of  a  proof  that  any  of  these 
were  inspired  books,  or  that  some  of  them  were  books  at 
all.  The  Bible  nowhere  says  that  Enoch  wrote  his  proph- 
ecy, or  that  Solomon  read  his  discourses  on  natural  history  ; 
nor  of  what  religious  interest  they  would  have  been  to  us 
any  more  than  the  hard  questions  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba, 
and  his  answers  to  them.  Though  the  loss  of  these  ancient 
chronicles  may  be  regretted  by  the  antiquarian,  the  Chris- 
tian feels  not  at  all  concerned  about  it ;  knowing  as  he  does, 


♦  John,  chap.  xx.  30. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  321 

on  the  testimony  of  Christ,  that  the  Holy  Scriptures,  as  he 
and  his  apostles  delivered  them  to  us,  contain  all  that  we 
need  to  know  in  order  to  repent  of  our  sins,  lead  holy  lives, 
and  go  to  heaven.;  and  that  we  have  the  very  same  Bible  of 
which  Jesus  said :  "  They  have  Moses  and  the  prophets ; 
let  them  hear  them.  ^  ^  ^  If  they  hear  not  Moses  and 
the  prophets,  neither  will  they  be  persuaded  though  one  rose 
from  the  dead."^ 

2.  Another  objection  is,  that  the  religion  of  the  Old  Test- 
ament was  essentially  different  from  that  of  the  New.  It 
is  at  once  acknowledged,  that  the  light  which  Christ  shed 
on  our  relations  to  God,  and  to  our  brethren  of  mankind, 
is  so  much  clearer  than  that  of  the  Old  Testament  that  we 
see  our  duties  more. plainly,  and  are  more  inexcusable  for 
neglecting  them,  than  those  who  had  not  the  benefit  of  Christ's 
teaching.  And  no  objection  can  be  raised  against  God  for 
not  sending  his  Son  sooner,  or  for  not  giving  more  light  to 
the  world  before  his  coming,  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  he 
is  debtor  to  mankind,  and  that  they  were  making  a  good  use 
of  the  light  he  gave  them.  So  that  the  question  is  not, 
Did  God  give  as  full  and  expanded  instructions  to  the 
Church  in  her  infancy  as  he  has  given  in  her  maturity  ?  but, 
Did  he  give  instructions  of  a  different  character?  It  is  not. 
Did  Christ  reveal  more  than  Moses  ?  but.  Did  Christ  con- 
tradict Moses  ?  And  here,  at  the  very  outset,  we  are  met 
by  Christ's  own  solemn  formal  disclaimer  of  any  such  in- 
tention :  "  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the  law  and 
the  prophets.  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  hut  to  fulfill.''^ 
And  as  to  the  actual  working  of  the  Christian  religion, 
when  Paul  is  asked,  "/s  the  law  then  against  the  promises 
of  Godf'f  he  indignantly  replies,  ^^God  forbid!^' 

But  it  is  urged,  "  Judaism  is  not  Christianity.    You  have 

*  Luke,  chap.  xvi.  29. 
t  Galatians,  chap.  iii.  21. 
21 


322  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

changed  the  Sabbath,  abolished  the  sacrifices,  trampled  upon 
the  rules  of  living,  eating,  and  visiting  only  with  the  pe- 
culiar people,  you  neglect  the  passover,  and  drop  circum- 
cision, the  seal  of  the  covenant,  all  on  the  authority  of 
Christ.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  these  are  not  essential 
elements  of  the  Old  Testament  religion?" 

Undoubtedly.  Outward  ceremonies  of  any  kind  never 
were  essential  parts  of  religion.  ^^ I  will  have  mercy  and  not 
sacrifice^''  is  an  Old  Testament  proverb,  which  clearly  tells 
us  that  outward  ceremonies  are  merely  means  toward  the 
great  end  of  all  religion.  "T'/ie  law,''  says  the  Holy  Ghost, 
by  the  pen  of  Paul,  "  was  our  schoolmaster  to  bring  us  to 
Christ "  The  bread  of  heavenly  truth  is  served  out  to 
God's  children  now  on  ten  thousand  wooden  tables,  instead 
of  one  brazen  altar ;  but  it  is  made  of  the  same  corn  of 
heaven,  it  is  dispensed  by  the  same  hand  of  love,  to  a  larger 
family,  it  is  true,  but  received  and  eaten  in  the  exercise  of 
the  very  same  religious  feelings,  by  any  hearer  of  the  gos- 
pel in  New  York,  as  by  Abraham  on  Moriah.  By  faith  in 
Christ  the  sinner  now  is  justified,  ^^Even  as  Abraham  be- 
lieved God,  and  it  was  imputed  to  him  for  righteousness'^  So 
says  one  who  knew  both  law  and  gospel  well.  ^^Do  we  then 
make  void  the  law  through  faith  ?  God  forbid  !  Yea,  we 
establish  the  law ! "  The  Epistles  to  the  Romans  and  to  the 
Hebrews  are  just  demonstrations  of  this  truth,  that  the 
law  was  the  blossom,  the  gospel  the  fruit. 

But  it  is  alleged  that  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament 
could  not  but  be  defective,  as  it  wanted  the  doctrines  of 
immortality  and  the  resurrection ;  of  which,  it  is  alleged,  the 
Old  Testament  saints  were  ignorant. 

It  were  easy  to  prove,  from  their  own  words  and  conduct, 
that  Job,  Abraham,  David,  and  Daniel,  were  not  ignorant 
of  these  great  doctrines.*     But  the  manner  in  which  our 

*  Job,  chap.  xix.  25.  Psalm  xvi.  10.  Hebrews,  chap.  xi.  13-16. 
Daniel,  chap.  xii.  2,  3. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  323 

Lord  proves  the  truth  of  the  resurrection,  by  a  reference 
to  it  as  undeniably  taught  in  the  Old  Testament,  must  ever 
silenf  e  this  objection.  ^^But  as  touching  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead.,  have  ye  not  read  that  which  was  spoken  unto  you 
hy  God^  saying,  I  am  the  God  of  Ahrahanij  the  God  of 
Isaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob  f  God  is  not  the  God  of  the 
dead,  hut  of  the  living"^ 

3.  But  it  is  objected  the  Hebrew  Jehovah  tolerated  and 
approved  polygamy,  slavery,  and  divorce ;  and,  in  general,  a 
low  code  of  morals  among  the  Hebrews. 

But  we  demand  to  know  what  standard  of  morals  our  ob- 
jectors adopt  ?  That  of  the  ancient  oriental  world  in  which 
Israel  lived  ?  Then  the  laws  of  Jehovah  were  very  far  in 
advance  of  that  age.  The  slave  had  his  blessed  Sabbath 
rest  secured  to  him  ;  which  is  more  than  modern  civilization 
can  secure  for  her  railway  slaves ;  his  master  was  forbidden 
to  treat  him  cruelly ;  and  the  maid-servant's  honor  was  pro- 
tected by  the  best  means  then  known ;  while  the  Sacred 
Writings  held  up  for  example  the  primitive  example  of  mar- 
riage, interposed  the  formality  of  a  legal  document  before 
divorce,  and  elevated  the  family  far  above  the  degraded 
state  of  the  heathen  around  them. 

But  the  objector  falls  back  on  the  morals  of  Christen- 
dom, the  civilization  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  judges 
the  laws  of  Moses  by  that  standard.  Very  well.  This  is 
simply  to  say  that  our  ideas  have  been  raised  to  the  stand- 
ard of  Christianity;  and  then  the  objection  is  that  the  laws 
of  Moses  are  not  so  spiritual  and  elevated  as  the  precepts  of 
Christ.  Our  Lord  himself  asserts  the  same  thing.  He 
says  Moses  tolerated  divorce  because  of  the  hardness  of  the 
people's  hearts ;  but  from  the  beginning  it  was  not  so.  And 
Paul  (Hebrews  viii.  6,  7)  alleges  the  imperfection  of  Moses' 
law  as  ^  good  reason  for  the  introduction  of  a  better  cove- 


Matthew,  chap.  xxii.  31,  82. 


324  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

nant.  The  Bible  itself  then  recognizes  an  advance  from 
good  to  better,  the  path  of  the  just  shining  more  and  more 
unto  the  perfect  day. 

But  then  it  is  asked,  Is  God  the  Author  of  an  imperfect 
law?  Could  God  give  a  defective  code  of  morals?  The 
question  entirely  misses  the  design  of  God's  revelation  as  a 
process  of  educating  his  children.  Suppose  we  ask.  Could 
God  speak  Hebrew — a  language  so  defective  in  philosophical 
terms?  God  must  condescend  to  the  mental,  and  even,  in 
some  degree,  to  the  moral  level  of  mankind  if  he  is  to  reach 
us  at  all.  All  education  must  begin  low,  and  rise  from 
step  to  step.  The  A,  B,  C  of  morals  must  be  first  learned. 
The  whole  analogy  of  providence  shows  this  to  be  God's 
method  of  procedure.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  like  the 
growing  seed ;  first  the  blade,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full 
corn  in  the  ear.  Gradual,  and  even  slow,  progress  is  the  law 
of  nature. 

Our  modern  civilization,  which  is  so  proudly  invoked,  is 
very  far  indeed  from  any  such  perfection  as  might  enable 
us  to  look  down  upon  Moses'  legislation  with  contempt. 
We  have  only  to  name  our  standing  armies  and  conscrip- 
tions; our  national  promises  to  pay  debts,  whicli  no  one 
ever  expects  to  pay;  our  laws  regarding  drunkenness,  and 
our  revenues  derived  from  the  licenses  for  the  sale  of 
liquors ;  the  utter  failure  of  our  attempts  to  put  down  bet- 
ting, gambling,  and  stock  and  gold  speculations,  prostitu- 
tion, bribery,  frauds,"  and  plundering  of  the  public  funds; 
to  convince  ourselves  that  there  are  many  things  law  can 
not  do,  even  in  this  nineteenth  century  of  civilization. 

Our  little  progress,  such  as  it  is,  has  not  been  made  all 
at  once,  or  by  one  great  advance.  God  gives  mankind  bless- 
ings by  degrees.  He  gave  the  mariner's  compass  to  the 
fourteenth  century,  the  printing  press  and  America  to  the 
fifteenth,  the  Bible  in  the  vulgar  tonerue  to  the  sixteenth, 
parliamentary  government   to  tb 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  325 

engine  to  the  eighteenth,  railroads  and  the  telegraph  to  the 
nineteenth.  One  might  as  well  cavil  at  his  providence  for 
not  giving  the  Hebrews  sewing  machines,  Hoe's  printing 
presses,  and  daily  newspapers,  when  they  entered  into  Ca- 
naan, as  for  delaying  to  give  them  the  elements  of  Chris- 
tian civil  law,  and  social  life,  before  they  were  able  to  value 
and  to  use  them. 

As  it  was,  Moses'  law  was  so  far  in  advance  of  their  own 
ideas  of  propriety,  and  so  far  in  a  Ivance  of  those  of  all  the 
people  around  them,  that  they  were  continually  falling  back 
from  it,  and  rebelling  against  it,  and  subjecting  themselves  to 
the  discipline  which  God  had  threatened  for  disobedience. 
Thus  they  were  kept  ever  looking  upward  to  a  higher 
model.  Their  transgressions  must  be  confessed  as  sins,  and 
atoned  for  by  bloody  sacrifices,  declaring  the  transgressor 
worthy  of  death.  Their  consciences  were  educated  to  the 
idea  of  holiness,  an  idea  utterly  wanting  among  the  heathen; 
and  the  law  became  a  powerful  motive  power,  urging  them 
to  higher  and  holier  lives,  and  preparing  them  to  receive 
the  higher  and  holier  example  and  precepts  of  Christ. 

The  imperfection,  then,  of  the  law  of  Moses,  so  far  from 
being  an  evidence  of  the  human  origin  of  the  Bible,  is  a 
mark  of  the  infinite  wisdom  of  the  great  Lawgiver  in  adapt- 
ing his  legislation  to  the  condition  of  his  people;  and  while 
tolerating  for  the  time  then  present  an  imperfect  state  of 
society,  just  as  at  this  time  he  tolerates  a  Christendom  far 
below  the  gospel  standard,  yet  implanting  in  the  minds  of 
his  people  principles  of  righteousness  and  love  which  were 
certain  eventually  to  raise  them  to  the  high  level  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  This,  then,  is  simply  an  in.stancc  of  the 
general  law  of  divine  development. 

4.  Again,  however,  it  is  contended,  "that  the  morality  of 
the  Old  Testament  was  narrow  and  bigoted ;  requiring,  in- 
deed, the  observance  of  charity  to  the  covenant  people,  but 
allowing  Israel  to  hate  all  others  as  enemies,  and  as  well  ex- 


326  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS 

pressed  in  the  text,  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  and  hate 
thine  enemy  "* 

But  let  it  be  noticed,  that  this  is  no  text  of  Scripture, 
nor  does  our  Lord  so  quote  it  He  does  not  say  it  is  so 
written,  but,  ye  have  heard  it  said  by  them  of  old  time.  The 
first  part  is  God's  truth;  the  second  is  the  devil's  addition 
to  it,  which  Christ  clears  away  and  denounces.  Tt  were 
easy  to  quote  multitudes  of  passages  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, commanding  Israel  to  show  kindness  to  the  stranger, 
and  a  whole  host  of  promises,  that  in  them  all  the  families 
of  the  earth  should  be  blessed ;  any  one  of  which  would 
sufficiently  refute  the  foolish  notion,  that  the  morality  of 
the  Old  Testament  was  geographical,  and  its  charity  merely 
national.  But  the  simple  fact,  that  the  most  sublime  sanc- 
tion of  world-wide  benevolence  which  ever  fell  even  from 
the  lips  of  Christ  himself,  was  uttered  by  him  as  the  sum 
and  substance  of  the  teachings  of  the  Old  Testament,  con- 
clusively confutes  this  dogma.  The  Golden  Rule  was  no 
new  discovery,  unless  its  Author  was  mistaken,  for  he  says : 
*'  Therefore  all  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should 
do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them:  FOR  THIS  is  the  LAW  and 
THE  PROPHETS. "f  He  declares  the  very  basis  and  founda- 
tion of  the  whole  Old  Testament  religion  to  be  those  eter- 
nal principles  of  godliness  and  charity,  which  he  quotes  in 
the  very  words  of  the  law :  "  Then  one  of  them,  which  teas 
a  lawyer,  ashed  him  a  question,  tempting  him,  and  saying. 
Master,  which  is  the  great  commandment  in  the  law  f  Jesus 
said  unto  him,  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind.  This 
is  the  first  and  great  commandment.  And  the  second  is  like 
unto  it.  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  On  these 
two    commandments  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets.^ ^^ 

*  Matthew,  chap.  v.  43. 

t  Matthew,  chap.  vii.  12. 

i  Matthew,  chap.  xxii.  35-40. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  327 

The  law  and  the  prophets,  then,  taught  genuine  world-wide 
benevolence,  Christ  being  witness;  and  the  moral  law  of  the 
Old  Testament  is  the  moral  law  of  the  New  Testament,  if 
we  may  believe  the  Lawgiver. 

5.  Still,  it  is  alleged,  "it  can  not  be  denied  that  the  writ- 
ers of  the  Old  Testament  breathed  a  spirit  of  vindictive- 
ness,  and  imprecated  curses  on  their  enemies,  utterly  at 
variance  with  the  precepts  of  the  gospel,  which  commands 
us  to  bless  and  curse  not;  and  even  in  their  solemn  devotions 
uttered  sentiments  unfit  for  the  mouth  of  any  Christian; 
nor  that  their  views  of  the  character  of  God  were  stern  and 
gloomy,  and  that  they  represented  the  Hebrew  Jehovah  as 
an  unforgiving  and  vengeful  being,  utterly  different  from 
the  kind  and  loving  Father  whom  Christ  delighted  to  reveal." 

This,  if  the  truth  were  told,  is  the  grand  objection  to  the 
Old  Testament.  The  holy  and  righteous  sin-hating  God, 
presented  in  its  history,  is  the  object  of  dislike.  The  God 
who  drowned  the  old  world,  destroyed  Sodom  and  Gomorrah 
by  fire  from  heaven,  commanded  the  extermination  of  the 
lewd  and  bloody  Canaanites,  thundered  his  curses  against 
sinners  of  every  land  and  every  age,  saying,  ^^  Cursed  he  lie 
that  conjirmetli  not  all  the  words  of  this  law  to  do  them,^' 
requiring  all  the  people  to  say  Amen,^  is  not  the  God  whom 
Universalists  can  find  in  their  hearts  to  adore.  A  mild,  easy, 
good-natured  being,  who  would  allow  men  to  live  and  die  in 
sin  without  any  punishment,  would  suit  them  better.  They 
try  to  think  that  he  is  altogether  such  an  one  as  themselves, 
and  an  approver  of  their  sin. 

But  it  is  worth  while  to  inquire  whether  the  Father  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  be  in  this  respect  anything  different 
from  the  Hebrew  Jehovah,  or  whether  the  gospel  has  in  the 
least  degree  lessened  his  displeasure  against  iniquity.  Paul 
thought  not  that  he  was  a  different  person,  when  he  said : 


Deuteronomy,  chap,  xxvii.  26. 


328  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

"  We  know  him  who  hath  said^  Vengeance  helongeth  unto  me, 
I  will  recompense,  saith  the  Lord.'^^  Jesus  thought  not  that 
he  was  more  lenient  to  sinners  when  he  cried,  "  Woe  unto 
thee,  Chorazin!  Woe  unto  thee,  Bethsaida!  ^  *  ^  Thou, 
Capernaum,  which  art  exalted  unto  heaven,  shalt  he  brought 
down  to  hell  *  *  *  /j^  shall  be  more  tolerable  for  the 
land  of  Sodom  in  the  day  of  judgment,  than  for  thee."f  It 
is  not  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  in  the  New,  that  we  are 
told  that  Jesus  himself  shall  come  "In  flaming  fire  taking 
vengeance  on  them  that  know  not  God,  and  that  obey  not  the 
gospel  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ;  who  shall  be  punished 
with  everlasting  destruction  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord, 
and  from  the  glory  of  his  power J'^X  It  is  not  an  old,  bigoted 
Hebrew  prophet  giving  a  vision  of  the  Hebrew  Jehovah, 
but  the  beloved  disciple  who  leaned  on  Jesus'  breast,  pictur- 
ing the  Savior  himself,  who  says:  "He  was  clothed  with  a 
vesture  dipped  in  blood  ;  and  his  name  is  called  the  Word  of 
God.  And  the  armies  which  were  in  heaven  followed  him 
upon  white  horses,  clothed  in  fine  linen,  white  and  clean  And 
out  of  his  mouth  goeth  a  sJiarp  sword,  that  with  it  he  should 
smite  the  nations  ;  and  he  shall  ruU  them  with  a  rod  of  iron  ; 
and  he  freadeth  the  wine-press  of  the  fierceness  and  wrath  of 
Almighty  God  "§ 

Let  no  man  imagine  that  the  New  Testament  offers  im- 
punity to  the  wicked,  or  that  the  Old  Testament  denies 
mercy  to  the  repenting  sinner,  or  that  Christ  exhibited  any 
other  God  than  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob — the 
same  Hebrew  Jehovah  who  commands  the  wicked  to  forsake 
his  way,  and  the  unrighteous  man  his  thoughts  ;  and  to  return 
unto  the  Lord,  and  he  will  have  mercy  upon  him ;  and  to  our 
God,  for  he  will  abundantly  pardon.\\     It  is  exceedingly 

*  Hebrews,  chap.  x.  80. 
t  Matthew,  chap.  xi. 
j  2  Thessalor.ians,  chap.  i. 
I  Eevelation,  chap.  xix. 
U  Isaiah,  chap.  Iv. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  329 

strange  that  those  who  dwell  upon  the  paternal  character 
of  God,  as  a  distinctive  feature  of  Christ's  personal  teach- 
ing, should  have  forgotten  that  the  hymns  of  the  Old  Test- 
ament church,  a  thousand  years  before  his  coming,  were 
full  of  this  endearing  relation ;  that  it  was  by  the  first  He- 
brew prophet  that  the  Hebrew  Jehovah  declared,  ^'■Israel  is 
imy  son,  even  my  Jirst-horn;  and  I  say  unto  thee,  Let  my  son 
ffo,  that  he  may  serve  me;  "*  and  that  by  the  last  of  them  he 
urges  Israel  to  obedience  by  this  tender  appeal :  "7/*  I  be  a 
father,  where  is  mine  honor  ?  "f  It  was  not  Christ,  but 
David — one  of  those  gloomy,  stern,  Hebrew  prophets — who 
penned  that  noble  hymn  to  our  Father  in  heaven,  which 
Christ  illustrated  in  his  Sermon  on  the  Mount : 

"  The  Lord  is  merciful  and  gracious, 
Slow  to  anger  and  plenteous  in  mercy. 
He  will  not  always  chide, 
Neither  will  he  keep  his  anger  forever. 
He  hath  not  dealt  with  us  after  our  sins, 
Nor  rewarded  us  according  to  our  iniquities ; 
For  as  the  heaven  is  high  above  the  earth, 
So  great  is  his  mercy  to  them  that  fear  him ; 
As  far  as  the  East  is  from  the  West, 
So  far  hath  he  removed  our  transgressions  from  us. 
Like  as  a  father  pitieth  his  children. 
So  the  Lord  pitieth  them  that  fear  him." — Psalm  ciii. 

It  is  utter  ignorance  of  the  Old  Testament  which  prompts 
any  one  to  imagine  that  it  presents  any  other  character  of 
God  than  "  The  Lord,  the  Lord  God,  merciful  and  gracious, 
long-suffering,  and  abundant  in  goodness  and  truth,  keeping 
mercy  for  tJiousands,  forgiving  iniquity  and  transgression 
and  sin,  and  that  will  by  no  means  clear  the  guilty^X     This 

*  Exodus,  chap.  iv.  22. 

t  Malachi,  chap.  i. 

X  Exodus,  chap,  xxxiv. 


330  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

is  the  name  which  God  proclaimed  to  Moses,  and  this  is 
the  character  which  he  proclaimed  in  Christ,  when  he 
cried  on  the  cross :  "il/y  God,  my  God,  ichy  hast  thou  for- 
saken me?  But  thou  art  holy,  0  thou  that  inhahitest  the 
praises  of  Israel."^  Justice  and  mercy  are  united  in  Christ 
dying  for  the  ungodly. 

It  is  untrue  to  say  that  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  actuated  by  a  spirit  of  malice,  or  of  revenge  for 
personal  injuries  as  such,  in  praying  for,  or  prophesying 
destruction  on  the  inveterate  enemies  of  God  and  his  cause. f 
Of  all  Scripture  characters,  David  has  been  most  defamed 
for  vindictiveness ;  but  surely  never  was  man  more  free 
from  any  such  spirit,  than  the  persecuted  fugitive,  who, 
with  his  enemy  in  his  hand  in  the  cave,  and  his  confidential 
advisers  urging  him  to  take  his  life,  cut  off  his  skirt  instead 
of  his  head ;  and  on  another  occasion  prevented  the  stroke 
which  would  have  smitten  the  sleeping  Saul  to  the  earth, 
and  sent  back  even  the  spear  and  the  cruse  of  water,  the 
trophies  of  his  generosity.  When  cursed  himself,  and  de- 
famed as  a  vengeful  shedder  of  blood  by  the  Benjamite,  he 
could  restrain  the  fury  of  his  followers,  protect  the  life  of 
the  ruffianly  traitor,  and  thus  appeal  to  God  as  the  witness 
of  his  innocence : 

"  0  Lord,  my  God !  if  I  have  done  this, 
If  there  be  iniquity  in  my  hands. 

If  I  have  rewarded  evil  to  him  that  was  at  peace  with  me, 
Yea  I  have  delivered  him  that  without  cause  was  mine 

enemy."! 
It  is  true  that  he  does  bitterly  curse  several  living  per- 
sons ;  of  whom  it  is  observable  that  some  had  done  him  no 
sort  of  personal  injury ;  as  Doeg  the  Edomite — the  Nana 

*  Psalm  xxii. 

t  2  Timothy,  chap.  iv.  14. 

J  Psalm  vii. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  331 

Saliib  of  liis  day — who  anticipated  the  scenes  of  Cawnpore, 
in  the  streets  of  Nob,  by  mercilessly  butchering  unoffend- 
ing men,  helpless  women,  and  innocent  babes.  But  surely 
^0  friend  of  humanity  can  imagine  that  it  is  improper  that 
the  chief  magistrate  of  Israel,  anointed  for  the  very  pur- 
pose of  being  a  terror  to  evil  doers,  should  express  his 
righteous  indignation  against  such  atrocities  ;  nor  confound 
such  public  execration  with  the  petty  gnawings  of  private 
revenge.  Still  less  can  the  fearer  of  God  doubt  the  propri- 
ety of  his  expressing  by  the  mouth  of  his  prophet,  that 
displeasure  he  signally  displayed  by  his  providence,  scath- 
ing and  blasting  the  accursed  wretch  into  a  terror  to  all 
bloody  and  deceitful  men  who  shall  jead  their  own  Warning 
in  his  doom. 

"God  shall  likewise  destroy* thee  forever, 
He  shall  take  thee  away  and  pluck  thee  from  thy  dwelling, 
And  root  thee  out  of  the  land  of  the  living."* 

AVe  have  the  most  solemn  assurance,  that  every  one  of 
the  historical  incidents  of  Scripture  is  recorded  for  our  in- 
struction, and  that  every  prophecy  gives  a  lesson  to  all  ages. 
"iVbit?  all  these  things  happened  unto  them  for  ensamples:  and 
they  are  written  for  our  admonition,  upon  whom^  the  ends  of 
the  world  are  come.'^f  The  imprecations  of  the  Bible 
against  individual  sinners  are  the  gibbets  on  which  these 
malefactors  are  hung  up  for  warning  to  all  men  to  flee  the 
crimes  that  brought  them  to  that  fate. 

It  is  put  beyond  the  possibility  of  doubt,  by  the  combined 
testimony  of  the  Lord  and  his  apostles,  that  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  the  curses  which  David  uttered,  he  spoke 
in  the  person  of  Christ  himself,  of  whom  he  was  a  type; 
and  with  direct  reference  to  the  crimes  and  punishment  of 
his  enemies.  Thus  the  Sixty-ninth  Psalm,  and  the  One  i 
hundred  and  ninth,  pre-eminently  the  cursing  Psalms,  are 

*  P.«alTns  vii.  and  lii.  and  2  Samuel,  chaps,  xvi.,  xxi.  and  xxii. 
t  1  Corinthians,  chap.  x. 


332  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

most  explicitly  and  repeatedly  asserted  by  Christ,  by  Peter, 
and  by  John,  to  belong  to  Christ,  and  to  express  his  very 
words :  "  This  scripture  mtist  needs  have  been  fulfilled,  which 
the  Holy  Ghost  by  the  mouth  of  David  spake  before  concern- 
ing Judas,  which  was  guide  to  them  that  took  Jesus.  *  *  * 
For  it  is  written  in  the  book  of  Psalms,  Let  his  habitation 
be  desolate,  and  let  no  man  dwell  therein.  And,  His  bishopric 
let  another  take."^  If  any  one  feels  reluctant  to  imagine 
that  such  cursings  should  fall  from  the  lips  of  the  merciful 
Savior,  let  him  remember  that  the  most  awful  curse  which 
shall  ever  fall  on  the  ears  of  terrified  men  shall  be  pro- 
nounced by  Jesus  himself,  ^'Depart,  ye  cursed,  into  everlasting 
fire,  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his  angels.' 'f  The  solemn 
facts  of  the  Bible  will  not  accommodate  themselves  to  our 
likes  and  dislikes.  Christ  Iove«  righteousness  and  hates  in- 
iquity;  in  the  Bible  he  takes  leave  to  say  so,  and  he  expects 
his  people  to  share  his  feelings,  and  to  be  willing  to  express 
them  on  fit  occasions. 

Personal  revenge,  and  curses  for  mere  personal  injuries, 
are  forbidden  in  the  New  Testament  as  well  as  in  the  Old. 
But  it  was  an  apostle  of  Jesus  Christ  who  cried,  "i/*  any 
man  love  not  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ j  let  him  be  accursed. 
Though  we  or  an  angel  from  heaven  bring  any  other  gospel 
unto  you,  let  him  be  accursed.'^X  Nor  until  we  can  in  some 
measure  feel  this  holy  indignation  against  sin,  and  this 
burning  desire  to  see  all  tyranny,  superstition,  bribery, 
licentiousness,  and  profanity,  crushed  and  banished  from 
the  earth,  can  we  pray  in  truth  '^Thy  kingdom  come." 
Still  less  can  we  be  prepared  for  the  rejoicings  of  heaven 
over  the  conquest  of  the  enemies  of  God  and  man  :  ^^ Rejoice 


*  John,  chap.  ii.  17;  chap,  xv.25;  chap.  xix.  28.  Acts,  chap.  i.  20. 
t  Matthew,  chap.  xxv.  41. 

X  Galatians,  chap.  i.  9.  1  Corinthians,  chap.  xvi.  22.    Kevelation, 
chaps,  xix.,  xx.  and  xxi. 


MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS.  333 

over   her,  thou  heaven,  and  ye  holy  apostles  and  prophets, 
for   God  hath  avenged  you  on  her." 

Reader,  you  hope  to  go  to  heaven ;  but  it  may  be  a  dif- 
ferent place  from  what  you  dream  of.  Did  you  ever  study 
the  employment  of  the  saints  there  ?  Are  you  washed  from 
your  sins?  Is  your  mind  purified  from  your  carnal  notions? 
Unless  a  man  be  born  again  he  can  not  see  the  kingdom  of 
God.  Are  your  likes  and  dislikes,  your  sentiments  and 
sympathies,  your  understanding  and  your  will,  all  brought 
into  subjection  to  Christ?  Can  you  heartily  love  and  adore 
a  sin-hating,  sin-avenging  Grod  ?  Or  do  you  shrink  back  in 
terror  or  dislike  from  God's  denunciations  of  wrath  against 
the  wicked?  Would  your  benevolence  lead  you  to  deal 
alike  with  the  righteous  and  the  wicked ;  and  to  abhor  the 
thought  of  destroying  them  that  destroy  the  earth  ?  Then 
how  will  you  join  in  the  hallelujahs  of  heaven ;  for  God's 
judgments  are  the  themes  of  thanksgiving  and  praise  from 
saints  and  angels  there,  and  this  is  their  song : 

'^Hallelujah,  salvation,  and  glory,  and  honor,  and  power, 
unto  the  Lord,  our  God,  for  true  and  righteous  are  his  judg- 
ments ;  for  he  hath  judged  the  great  whore,  which  did  cor- 
rupt  the  earth  with  her  fornication,  and  hath  avenged  the 
hlood  of  his  servants  at  her  hands.  And  again  they  said. 
Hallelujah!  And  her  smoke  rose  up  for  ever  and  ever.  And 
the  four  and  twenty  elders  and  the  four  living  creatures  fell 
down  and  worshiped  God  that  sat  on  the  throne,  saying. 
Amen  I  Hallelujah !  And  a  voice  came  out  of  the  throne 
saying,  Praise  our  God,  all  ye  his  servants;  and  ye  that  fear 
him,  both  small  and  great.  And  I  heard  as  it  were  the  voice 
of  a  great  multitude,  and  as  the  voice  of  many  waters,  and 
as  the  voice  of  mighty  thunderings,  saying.  Hallelujah!  FoR 
THE  Lord  God  Omnipotent  reigneth."* 

And  now,  if  this  be  the  character  of  God,  if  he  be  indeed 


*  Revelation,  chaps,  xix.,  xx.  and  xxi. 


334  MOSES  AND  THE  PROPHETS. 

one  who  hates  iniquity,  and  punishes  impenitent  sinners,  we 
need  not  wonder  that  those  who  spake  his  word  should  utter 
imprecations,  either  in  the  Old  Testament  or  in  the  New; 
but  rather  bless  the  mercy  which  warns  before  justice 
strikes,  which  hangs  the  red  lantern  over  the  abyss,  and 
which  seeks  by  the  terrors  of  the  Lord  to  persuade  men 
from  perdition.  The  curses  of  the  Bible  are  denounced 
against  the  enemies  of  Grod,  with  the  design  of  showing 
sinners  their  danger,  and  leading  them  to  repentance. 

The  conclusion,  then,  of  our  investigation  is,  that  the  Old 
Testament  is  the  Word  of  God  no  less  than  the  New ;  that 
it  is  in  no  respect  contrary  to  it ;  that  all  its  parts — the  law 
and  the  prophets,  and  the  Psalms — are  of  divine  authority; 
that  all  its  contents  were  written  by  divine  direction,  whether 
prophecy  or  history,  ceremony  or  morality,  promise  or 
threatening,  curses  or  blessings.  It  is  of  the  Old  Testament 
principally  that  the  Holy  Ghost  declares:  ^^All  Scripture  is 
given  hy  inspiration  of  God,  and  is  profitable  for  doctrine, 
for  reproof  for  correction,  for  instruction  in  righteousness; 
that  the  man  of  God  inay  be  perfect,  thoroughly  furnished 
unto  all  good  works."^ 


2  Timothy,  chap.  iii.  16,  17. 


CHAPTER    X. 


Infidelity    Among  the    IStae^s. 


A  little  or  superficial  knowledge  of  philosophy  may  incline  a 
man's  mind  to  Atheism;  but  depth  in  philosophy  bringeth  men's 
minds  about  to  religion. — Bacon. 


When  skeptics,  who  are  determined  not  to  believe  in  the 
Bible,  find  the  historical  evidences  of  its  genuineness,  au- 
thority, and  inspiration,  impregnable  against  the  assaults  of 
criticism,  they  turn  their  attention  to  some  other  mode  of 
attack,  and  of  late  years  have  selected  their  weapons  from 
the  physical  sciences.  The  argument  thus  raised  is,  that  the 
Bible  can  not  be  the  "Word  of  God,  because  it  asserts  facts 
contrary  to  the  teachings  of  science.  Of  this  warfare  Vol- 
taire may  be  considered  the  leader,  in  his  celebrated  attack 
on  the  chemical  processes  recorded  in  Scripture;  in  which 
he  exposed  himself  to  the  ridicule  of  all  the  chemists  and 
metallurgists  in  Europe,  by  denying  the  possibility  of  dis- 
solving the  golden  calf;  the  solution  of  gold  being  actually 
found  in  every  gilder's  shop  in  Paris,  and  known  even  to 
coiners  and  forgers,  for  hundreds  of  years  before  he  made 
this  notable  discovery.     The  result  was  ominous. 

The  whole  circle  of  the  sciences  has  been  ransacked  for 
such  arguments,  and  especially  has  every  new  discovery 
been  hailed  by  skeptics  as  an  ally  to  their  cause,  until  fur- 
ther acquaintance  has  demonstrated  that  the  stranger,  too, 
was  in  alliance  with  religion.  Thus,  when  a  few  years  ago, 
Geology  began  to  upheave  his  titantic  form,  he  was  eagerly 

(335) 


336  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

greeted  as  a  being  undoubtedly  not  of  celestial,  but  ratter 
of  subterranean,  or  even  of  infernal  origin,  willing  to  em- 
ploy his  gigantic  powers  in  the  assault  upon  heaven,  and 
able  to  overwhelm  the  Bible  and  the  Church  under  the  ruins 
of  former  worlds.  But  now  that  skeptics  have  discovered 
the  proofs  he  gives  of  the  presence  of  the  Almighty  on  this 
world  of  ours,  they  are  getting  shy  of  his  acquaintance,  and 
are  cultivating  the  society  of  some  still  more  juvenile  visi- 
tors from  the  chambers  of  animal  magnetism  and  biology. 
The  same  scene  will  doubtless  be  acted  over  again;  and 
these  infantile  strangers,  when  able  to  give  distinct  utter- 
ance to  the  facts  of  their  developed  consciousness,  will  bear 
testimony  to  the  truth  of  Grod. 

Such  objections  to  the  Bible  are  very  rarely  brought  for- 
ward by  truly  scientific  men.  It  is  a  phenomenon,  like  the 
advent  of  a  great  comet,  to  find  a  man  profoundly  versed 
in  science  attack  the  Bible.  Your  third  or  fourth  rate 
men  of  learning  attain  distinction  in  this  field.  An  anti- 
Bible  writer  or  lecturer  has  generally  been  promoted  to  that 
high  eminence  from  the  school-room,  or  the  editorial  sanc- 
tum of  an  unsuccessful  newspaper;  or  his  patients  have  not 
sufficiently  appreciated  his  physic ;  or  he  has  failed  in  get- 
ting a  patent  right  for  his  wonderful  perpetual  motion;  or 
possibly  he  has  enlarged  his  practical  knowledge  of  science 
in  the  laboratory  of  some  college,  or  has  had  his  head 
turned  by  being  asked  to  hear  the  mathematical  recitations 
during  the  sickness  of  some  professor.  But  to  hear  of  men 
like  Galileo,  Kepler,  Boyle,  Newton,  and  Leibnitz,  or  Lyell, 
Mantell,  Herschel,  Agassiz,  Hitchcock,  Faraday,  Balbo, 
Nichol,  or  Rosse,  heading  an  attack  upon  Christianity,  would 
be  an  unprecedented  phenomenon.  Such  men  are  profoundly 
impressed  with  the  thorough  agreement  between  the  facts 
of  nature  rightly  observed,  and  the  declarations  of  the  Bi- 
ble rightly  interpreted. 

It  is  equally  rare  to  hear  of  a  specialist  in  any  depart- 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  337 

ment  of  science  assume  Atheistic  ground  in  that  depart- 
ment ;  though  a  few  of  that  class  are  willing  to  believe  that 
soma  other  department  of  science,  of  which  they  have  no 
personal  knowledge,  favors  Infidelity.  Even  Huxley,  with 
all  his  nonsense  about  the  identical  composition  of  the  proto- 
plasm of  the  mutton  chop,  and  that  of  the  lecturer,  denies, 
and  disproves,  spontaneous  generation,  and  votes  in  the 
London  School  Board  for  the  reading  of  the  Bible.  The 
leading  Infidel  writers,  such  as  Comte  and  Spencer,  are  not 
distinguished  by  any  personal  scientific  researches  and  dis- 
coveries; they  are  merely  collectors  and  retailers,  at  second- 
hand, of  other  men's  discoveries.  The  original  scientific 
explorers  and  discoverers  are  few  and  modest. 

Nevertheless,  the  other  class,  being  both  the  most  numer- 
ous and  the  most  noisy,  make  up  by  loquacity  for  their  de- 
ficiency of  science,  and  counterbalance  their  ignorance  by 
their  assurance.  Such  writers,  assuming  that  they  have 
outstrippe  1  all  the  philosophers  of  former  days,  will  tell 
you  how  foolishly  David,  and  Kepler,  and  Bacon,  and  New- 
tan,  and  Herschel  dreamed  of  the  heavens  declaring  the 
glory  of  the  Lord,  and  the  firmament  showing  his  handi- 
work ;  "  while  at  the  present  time,  and  for  minds  properly 
familiarized  with  true  astronomical  philosophy,  the  heavens 
display  no  other  powers  than  those  of  natural  laws,  and  no 
other  glory  than  that  of  Hipparchus,  of  Kepler,  of  New- 
ton, and  of  all  who  have  helped  to  discover  them."  The- 
ology belongs  only  to  the  infancy  of  the  human  intellect; 
metaphysical  philosophy  is  the  amusement  of  youth;  but 
the  full -grown,  man  has  learned  to  relinquish  both  religion 
and  reason,  and  comes  to  the  "  positive  state  of  science  in 
which  the  human  mind,  acknowledging  the  impossibility  of 
obtaining  absolute  knowledge,  abandons  the  search  after  the 
origin  and  destination  of  the  universe,  and  the  knowledge 
of  the  secret  causes  of  phenomena."  The  crown  of  modern 
science  is  ultimately  to  be  placed  upon  the  brow  of  Athe- 
22 


338  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

ism ;  but  long  before  that  eagerly  desired  achievement,  the 
old  Bible  theology  is  to  be  buried  beyond  the  possibility  of 
a  resurrection,  under  mountains  of  natural  laws,  and  monu- 
ments of  scientific  discovery.  These  assertions,  confidently 
made,  and  perseveringly  reiterated  in  the  ears  of  ungodly 
men  ignorant  of  the  facts,  of  impetuous  youths  eager  to 
throw  off  the  restraints  of  religion,  of  Christians  weak  in 
the  faith,  and  even  poured  into  the  unsuspecting  mind  of 
childhood, produce  the  most  painful  results;  and  it  becomes 
the  imperative  duty  of  the  bishops  of  the  Church  of  Christ 
not  to  allow  them  to  pass  unchallenged,  but  to  convince  the 
gainsayers,  and  stop  the  mouths  of  these  unruly  and  vain 
talkers ;  or,  if  that  be  not  possible,  to  make  their  folly  man- 
ifest to  all  men.  The  implements  for  such  a  service  are 
well  tried  and  abundant,  and  the  difl&culty  lies  only  in  mak- 
ing a  proper  selection. 

At  first  view,  the  extinction  of  religion  by  science  seems  very 
unlikely.  It  is  as  unlikely  that  anything  that  an  Infidel  says 
about  religion  should  be  true,  as  that  a  blind  man  should 
describe  the  sun  correctly,  or  even  read  a  chapter  accurately, 
with  the  book  open  before  him  ?  I  shall  show  you  presently 
that  learned  Infidels  make  the  grossest  blunders  respecting 
the  plainest  Scripture  records  of  scientific  facts.  It  is  very 
unlikely  that  Infidels,  who  lay  no  claim  to  prophetic  in- 
spiration, should  make  any  predictions  about  religion  more 
reliable  than  those  they  have  been  telling  so  abundantly  for 
two  hundred  years  past,  respecting  the  immediate  over- 
throw of  Christianity  and  the  Bible ;  which,  nevertheless, 
has  been  going  on  conquering  new  kingdoms  every  year,  its 
missionaries  outstripping  scientific  ardor  in  exploring  the 
mysteries  of  African  geography,  honorably  receiving  the 
prizes  which  the  Infidel  Volney  instituted  for  philological 
proficiency,  and  printing  Bibles  from  Voltaire's  printing- 
press.  And  it  is  very  unlikely  that  these  physical  sciences, 
so  long  worshipers  in  the  temple  of  God,  should  now  become 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  339 

impious;  as  unlikely  as  that  Hitchcock,  or  McCosh,  or 
Hodge,  or  Barnes  should  now,  in  their  old  days,  renounce 
the  Bible,  and  blaspheme  God.  What !  astronomy,  and 
zoology,  and  botany,  and  ethnography,  that  were  suckled  at 
the  breast  of  the  Bible,  raise  their  hands  against  the  mother 
that  bore  them  !  Incredible  !  These  sciences  made  an  early 
profession  of  religion  ;  taught  Sabbath-school  in  the  days 
of  Job,  Zophar,  and  Elihu ;  wrote  sacred  poetry,  and  were 
licensed  to  preach,  in  the  days  of  Solomon ;  poured  forth 
prophetic  raptures  in  the  days  of  Uzziah,  Jotham,  Ahaz, 
and  Hczekiah  ;  wrote  volumes  on  the  politics  of  Christianity 
in  Babylon,  and  painted  glorious  visions  of  the  victories  of 
the  Lamb  of  God,  and  dazzling  views  of  the  landscapes  of 
paradise  restored,  in  Patmos ;  employed  the  gigantic  intel- 
lect of  Newton,  the  elegant  pen  of  Paley,  the  eloquence  of 
Chalmers,  Herschcl's  heaven-piercing  eye,  and  Miller's  mus- 
cular arm,  to  guard  the  outer  courts  of  the  sanctuary,  while 
they  sung  sublime  anthems  to  the  music  of  David's  harp 
within.  Have  they  now,  after  such  a  life  of  devotion,  re- 
linquished all  these  sublimities  and  beatitudes,  taken  lodg- 
ings in  the  sty,  and  renounced  their  faith  in  God,  and 
hope  of  heaven,  for  the  Infidel  maxim,  "  Let  us  eat  and 
drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die?  "  God  forbid  !  On  the  con- 
trary, all  matured  science  glorifies  its  Creator. 

As  a  specimen  of  the  testimony  of  matured  science  to 
religion,  let  us  look  at  the  progress  of  astronomy,  as  it  has 
successively  swept  away  one  Atheistic  theory  after  another, 
answered  anti-Bible  objections,  and  illustrated  promises 
couched  in  heavenly  figures,  long  incomprehensible  to  the 
Church.  If,  in  order  to  present  something  like  a  fair  out- 
line of  the  bearings  of  astronomy  on  modern  Atheism,  we 
should  have  occasion  to  repeat,  expand,  and  illustrate  some 
things  already  introduced  in  previous  chapters,  the  repeti- 
tion won't  hurt  us.  A  good  story  is  nothing  the  worse  for 
being  twice  told ;  and  the  story  of  our  opponents  is  nothing 


340  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

but  a  ceaseless  repetition  of  the  Atheism  of  twenty  centu- 
ries. 

The  progress  of  astronomical  science  has  swept  away  the 
alleged  facts  on  which  all  systems  of  Atheism  have  been 
based. 

1.  It  has  refuted  the  fundamental  dogma  of  Atheism,  thai 
the  universe  is  infinite,  and  therefore  self-existent. 

The  assertion  is  confidently  made  by  Atheists  and  Pan- 
theists, that  the  universe  has  no  boundaries;  not  merely 
none  which  we  can  see,  but  that  it  actually  fills  all  immens- 
ity; suns  succeeding  suns,  and  firmament  clustering  beyond 
firmament,  throughout  infinite  space. 

It  is  indispensable  for  the  Atheist  not  only  to  assert,  but 
to  prove  this  to  be  the  fact,  if  he  would  convince  himself, 
or  any  other  person,  that  the  universe  had  no  Creator,  but 
exists  by  the  necessity  of  its  own  nature ;  for  that  which 
exists  by  the  necessity  of  its  own  nature  must  exist  in  all 
time,  and  in  every  place.  No  reason  can  be  given  why  self- 
existent  suns,  planets,  and  moons  should  exist  in  any  one 
portion  of  space,  and  not  exist  in  any  other  similar  portion 
of  space.  For  if  such  a  reason  could  be  given,  that  reason 
must  show  a  cause  for  their  existence  in  the  one  place,  and 
their  non-existence  in  another ;  and  that  cause  must  have 
existed  before  the  universe,  and  must  have  been  a  cause 
sufficient  to  produce  the  effect.  This  sufficient  cause  in- 
cludea  ability  to  produce,  wisdom  to  arrange,  and  force  to 
put  in  motion  all  the  powers  of  the  universe;  qualities 
which  reside  only  in  an  intelligent  being.  This  is  the 
cause  which  the  Bible  asserts  when  it  says,  "  In  the  begin- 
ning God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth,"  and  which 
Atheists  deny  when  they  assert  that  "  the  universe  is  eter- 
nal and  infinite." 

Now,  this  fundamental  article  of  the  creed  of  Infidels  is 
utterly  incapable  of  proof  If  the  fact  were  really  so,  they 
never  could  prove  it.    They  acknowledge  no  revelation  from 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  341 

an  infinite  understanding,  but  found  their  belief  on  the 
knowledge  of  a  number  of  finite  and  ignorant  beings.  Be- 
fore they  are  competent  to  pronounce  upon  the  extent  of  the 
universe,  they  must  explore  it  thoroughly;  which,  when 
they  shall  have  done,  they  will  have  demonstrated  that  it 
has  boundaries,  seeing  they  have  discovered  them ;  but,  if 
they  have  not  thoroughly  explored  the  universe,  they  can 
not  say  that  it  is  infinite,  because  they  do  not  know.  The 
very  utmost,  then,  which  could  possibly  be  asserted  on  the 
matter  would  be,  not  that  the  universe  has  no  boundaries, 
but  that  man  has  never  reached  them.  As  in  the  case  of 
ocean  soundings,  if  we  can  not  find  bottom,  we  are  not 
therefore  to  conclude  that  there  is  none,  but  that  our  line 
is  not  long  enough,  or  our  lead  not  heavy  enough  to  reach  it. 

It  were  a  logical  absurdity  to  say,  that  the  whole  is 
greater  than  the  sum  of  its  parts — thatany  number  of  finite 
parts  could  compose  an  infinite  universe.  Each  sun  or 
planet  is  a  finite  object,  and  any  possible  number  of  them 
can  be  counted  in  a  sufficient  time.  It  is  impossible  that 
any  number  can  be  infinite ;  for  we  are  not  using  the  word 
infinite  here  in  the  loose  sense  in  which  it  is  used  by  math- 
ematicians, when  they  speak  of  an  infinite  series;  that  is,  a 
series  which,  though  it  has  no  end,  has  a  beginning;  but  in 
the  strict  sense  of  something  having  neither  beginning  nor 
end.  A  beginning  of  the  universe,  either  in  space  or  time, 
is  the  very  thing  the  Atheist  denies. 

The  same  objection  applies  to  the  allegation,  that  infinite 
space  is  full  of  ether,  air,  gas,  nebulae,  or  any  other  kind  of 
matter.  It  is  an  assertion  incapable  of  proof;  and  there- 
fore thoroughly  unscientific;  as  all  Infidel  theories  are. 
But  if  it  could  be  proven  that  every  part  of  space  accessi- 
ble to  our  telescopes  is  full  of  an  ether  whose  undulations 
transmit  light,  as  we  believe  it  can,  that  would  be  only  a 
proof  of  the  finitude  of  matter.  That  ether  consists  of 
parts  whose  movements  can  be  measured  and  numbered ;  and 


342  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

no   possible  multitude  of  such   parts  can  amount   to   the 
infinite. 

While  reason  thus  enables  us  to  show  this  dogma  of  the 
infinity  of  the  universe  to  be  theoretically  improbable,  and 
logically  irrational,  science  has  lately  taken  a  more  decisive 
step,  and  demonstrated  it  to  be  actually  false.  The  universe* 
has  boundaries,  and  we  have  seen  them.  The  proof  is  sim- 
ple, and  easily  demonstrable.  That  broad  band  of  lumin- 
ous cloud  which  stretches  across  the  heaven,  called  the 
Milky  Way,  consists  of  millions  of  stars,  so  small  and  dis- 
tant that  we  can  not  see  the  individual  stars,  and  so  numer- 
ous that  we  can  not  help  seeing  the  light  of  the  mass;  just 
as  you  see  the  outline  of  the  forest  at  a  distance,  but  are 
unable  to  distinguish  the  individual  trees.  Besides  this 
mass  of  stars  to  which  our  solar  system  belongs,  there  are 
thousands  of  smaller  similar  clouds  in  various  parts  of  the 
heavens,  which  have  successively  been  shown  to  consist  of 
multitudes  of  stars.  But  all  around  these  star-clouds  the 
clear  blue  sky  is  discovered  by  the  naked  eye. 

Now,  it  is  easy  to  perceive,  that  if  all  the  regions  of  infi- 
nite space  were  filled  either  with  self-luminous  suns,  or 
planets  capable  of  reflecting  light,  or  luminous  nebulae,  or 
comets  of  gaseous  consistency,  at  such  distances  as  the 
Milky  Way,  or  any  other  star-cloud  demonstrates  to  be  safe 
and  practicable,  we  should  see  no  blue  sky  at  all ;  but  the 
whole  vault  of  heaven  would  present  that  whitish  light  re- 
sulting from  the  mingling  of  the  rays  of  multitudes  of 
stars,  planets,  and  comets,  which  the  Milky  Way  does  act- 
ually exhibit.  No  matter  how  small  or  how  distant  these 
stars,  if  they  were  only  infinitely  numerous^  it  is  impossible 
that  there  could  be  any  point  in  the  heavens  unilluminated 
by  their  rays,  even  although  the  stars  themselves  were  in- 
visible to  our  eyes,  or  even  to  our  telescopes.  The  whole 
heaven  would  be  one  vast  Milky  Way.  Or  rather,  as  Hum- 
boldt reasons,  "  If  the  entire  vault  of  heaven  were  covered 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  343 

with  innumerable  strata  of  stars,  one  behind  the  otTier,  as 
with  a  widespread  starry  canopy,  and  light  were  undimin- 
ishe  1  in  its  passage  through  space,  the  sun  would  be  distin- 
guished only  by  its  spots,  the  moon  would  appear  as  a  dark 
disj,  and  amid  the  general  blaze  not  a  constellation  would 
be  visible."*  It  would  appear  also  to  follow,  as  a  necessary 
consequence,  that  such  an  infinite  multitude  of  blazing  suns 
must  generate  a  heat  compared  with  which  the  general  con- 
flagration would  be  cool  and  comfortable. 

But  the  telescope  shows  us  a  state  of  matters  vastly  dif- 
ferent from  this.  It  shows  us,  in  fact,  that  space,  so  far 
from  being  occupied  with  suns  and  stars,  is  mostly  empty. 
Our  universe  is  only  a  little  island  in  the  great  ocean  of  in- 
finite space. 

Though  the  telescope  discovers  multitudes  of  stars  where 
the  naked  eye  sees  none,  yet  they  are,  in  far  the  greater 
number  of  instances,  ^'seen  projected  on  a  perfectly  dark 
heaven,  without  any  appearance  of  intermixed  nebulosity y\ 
And  even  through  the  Milky  Way,  and  the  other  nebulae, 
the  telescope  penetrates,  through  "  intervals  absolutely  dark, 
and  completely  void  of  any  star,  of  the  smallest  telescopic 
magnitude''X  It  may  assist  us  to  understand  the  full  im- 
port of  this  declaration,  to  remember  that  Lord  Rosse's 
large  telescope  clearly  defines  any  object  on  the  moon's  sur- 
face as  large  as  the  Custom  House.  Its  power  of  penetrat- 
ing space  surpasses  our  power  of  imagination,  but  is  repre- 
sented by  saying,  that  light,  which  flashes  from  San  Fran- 
cisco to  London  quicker  than  you  can  close  your  eye  and 
open  it  again,  requires  millions  of  years  to  travel  to  our 
earth  from  the  most  distant  star- cloud  discoverable  by  this 
telescope.§     If  a  galaxy  like  this  of  ours  existed  anywhere 

■»  Cosmos  III.  138. 

t  Herschel's  Outlines,  chap.  xvii.  sec.  887. 

X  Cosmos  III.  197. 

I  Nichols  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  9th  ed.  p.  180. 


344  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

within  this  amazing  distance,  that  telescope  would  discover 
its  existence.  It  has,  in  fact,  augmented  the  universe  visi- 
ble to  us,  125,000,000  times,  and  thus  made  us  feel  that 
not  merely  this  world,  which  constitutes  our  earthly  all,  and 
yon  glorious  sun,  which  shines  upon  it,  but  all  the  host  of 
heaven's  suns,  and  planets,  and  moons,  and  firmaments, 
which  our  unaided  eyes  behold,  are  but  as  a  handful  of  the 
sand  of  the  ocean  shore  compared  with  the  immensity  of. 
the  universe.  But  ever,  and  along  with  this,  it  has  shown 
us  the  ocean  as  well  as  the  shore,  and  revealed  boundless 
regions  of  darkness  and  solitude  stretching  around  and  far 
away  beyond  these  islands  of  existence.  The  telescope, 
then,  enlarges  and  confirms  our  views  of  the  extent  of  the 
unoccupied  portions  of  space. 

If  there  were  only  one  dark  point  of  the  heavens  no 
larger  than  the  apparent  magnitude  of  the  smallest  star, 
this  one  unoccupied  space  would  sufficiently  disprove  the 
infinity  of  the  universe,  inasmuch  as  there  would  be  a  por- 
tion of  space  of  boundless  length,  and  of  a  diameter  not 
less  than  the  diameter  of  the  earth's  orbit,  say  190,000,000 
miles,  in  which  stars  might  exist,  as  they  dp  in  its  borders, 
but  yet  do  not.  But  the  argument  becomes  utterly  over- 
whelming, when  the  attempt  is  made  to  calculate  the  pro- 
portion of  space  occupied  by  the  stars  to  that  left  unoccu- 
pied. Whether  we  take  Herschel's  computation,  that  the 
nebulae  cover  one  two  hundred  and  seventieth  part  of  the 
superficies  of  the  visible  heaven,*  or  Struve's  supposition 
of  the  existence  of  a  star  subtending  no  measurable  angle, 
in  every  part  of  the  visible  sky  as  large  as  the  surface  of 
the  moon,  the  vast  disproportion  of  the  universe,  to  the 
space  in  which  it  is  placed,  forces  itself  upon  our  notice. 
For,  upon  the  largest  of  these  computations,  the  propor- 
tion of  existence  to  empty  space  is  mathematically  proved 


*  Cosmos  IV.  292. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  345 

to  be  not  greater  than  as  the  cube  of  one  to  the  cube  of 
two  hundred  and  sixtj^-nine;  that  is  to  say,  there  is  room 
for  19,395,109  such  universes  as  this  of  ours  in  that  small 
part  of  infinite  space  open  to  the  view  of  Herschel's  tele- 
scopes. But  when  we  come  to  consider  the  vastness  of  these 
regions  of  darkness,  over  which  no  light  has  traveled  for 
twenty  millions  of  years,  and  remember  also  that  astronomers 
have  looked  clear  through  the  nebulae,  and  find  that  they  bear 
no  more  cubical  proportion  to  the  infinite  darkness  behind 
them  than  the  sparks  of  a  chimney  do  to  the  extent  of  the 
sky  against  which  they  seem  projected,  so  far  from  imagin- 
ing the  universe  to  be  infinite,  we  stand  confounded  at  its 
relative  insignificance,  and  are  convinced  that  it  bears  no 
more  proportion  to  infinite  space  than  a  fishing-boat  does 
to  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

There  is  no  possible  evasion  of  this  great  fact,  by  any 
contradictory  hypothesis.  It  can  not  be  objected  "that 
stars  may  exist  at  infinite  distances,  whose  light  has  not  yet 
reached  the  limits  of  our  universe."  If  they  do,  they  did 
not  exist  from  eternity,  for  there  is  no  possible  distance  over 
which  light  could  not  have  traveled,  during  eternal  dura- 
tion. But  their  eternal  existence  is  the  very  thing  which 
the  Atheist  is  concerned  to  prove.  Grant  that  infinite 
space  is  filled  with  worlds  which  had  a  beginning,  and  their 
necessary  existence  instantly  falls,  and  we  are  compelled  to 
seek  for  a  cause  of  their  beginning  of  existence ;  that  is  to 
say,  a  Creator. 

Nor  will  it  answer  the  purpose  to  say,  "  that  for  anything 
we  know  to  the  contrary,  these  dark  regions  may  be  filled 
with  dark  stars." 

If  the  fact  were  so,  it  is  equally  fatal  to  the  dogma  of 
self-existence.  Some  stars  shine;  others  are  dark.  Why 
so?  Wherefore  this  difi"erence?  Variety  is  an  effect,  and 
demands  a  prior  cause.  Were  there  only  two  stars  in  the 
sky,  or  two  substances  on  the  earth,  and  those  unlike  in  any 


346  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

particular,  that  plurality,  and  that  variety,  would  prove 
that  they  could  not  be  infinite  or  self-existent,  but  depend- 
ent upon  some  cause  for  their  existence,  and  for  their  vari- 
ety of  form. 

But  we  do  know  many  things  contrary  to  the  notion  that 
the  dark  regions  of  infinite  space  may  be  full  of  dark  stars. 
Light  is  not  the  only  indication  of  the  presence  of  a  star. 
The  attraction  of  gravity,  which  is  wholly  independent  of 
light,  is  a  proof  quite  as  certain  and  satisfactory  to  the  as- 
tronomer. The  presence  of  stars  and  planets  too  faint  to 
be  discovered  by  the  naked  eye,  and  of  one,  the  planet  Nep- 
tune,^ as  far  distant  from  the  planet  disturbed  by  its  attrac- 
tion as  the  earth  is  from  the  sun,  was  ascertained,  and  its 
place  pointed  out  by  Adams  and  Leverrier,  hefore  it  was 
seen.  If  the  dark  interplanetary  spaces,  then,  were  full  of 
dark  attracting  bodies,  the  perturbations  of  the  other  plan- 
ets would  discover  their  existence.  So  the  presence  of  some 
invisible  stars  at  much  greater  distances  from  their  visible 
associates  has  been  discovered  by  Bessel,f  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  a  dark  firmament  may  yet  be  discovered,  con- 
taining as  great  a  number  of  dark  stars  as  we  now  behold  of 
luminaries ;  another  group  of  islets  in  the  ocean  of  infinite 
space.  But  the  very  facts  which  will  prove  their  existence 
will  disprove  their  infinity ;  for  we  can  know  their  presence 
only  by  their  perturbation  of  the  proper  motions  of  the  vis- 
ible stars;  but  if  infinite  space  were  full  of  dark  bodies, 
the  visible  stars  would  have  no  room  to  move  at  all.  It  is 
easily  demonstrable,  that  if  infinite  space  were  filled  with 
dark  stars,  the  equilibrium  and  coherence  of  our  galaxy, 
and  of  all  other  clusters  of  stars,  would  be  destroyed.  The 
existence  of  nebulae,  and  clusters,  and  the  revolutions  of  the 
binary  stars,  are  conclusive  proof  that  the  dark  parts  of  in- 
finite space  are  not  full  of  dark  attracting  bodies. 

*  NichoU's  Contemplations  on  the  Solar  System,  xxx. 
t  Cosmos  III.  253. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  347 

Nor  can  the  Atheist  here  raise  his  usual  argument  from 
unknown  facts,  and  say  that,  "far  beyond  the  range  of  our 
most  powerful  telescopes,  a  boundless  expanse  of  firmaments 
may  exist."  It  concerns  not  our  present  argument  whether 
such  exist  or  not.  Whatsoever  discoveries  may  be  made  to 
eternity,  of  firmaments,  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand 
times  larger  than  we  now  behold,  they  can  never  hear  the 
smallest  proportion  to  the  infinite  space  in  v^hich  they  exist. 
Beyond  these  islets  will  extend  gulfs  and  oceans  immeasur- 
able. Our  argument,  however,  has  no  concern  with  the 
unknown  possible,  but  with  the  actual  fact — visible  to  the 
naked  eye  and  confirmed  by  the  telescope — that  there  is  a 
portion  of  space  in  which  millions  of  universes  such  as  this 
might  exist  with  safety,  yet  they  do  not.  Worlds,  there- 
fore, do  not  exist  by  the  necessity  of  their  own  nature, 
wherever  there  is  room  for  them,  but  must  have  had  some 
pre-existent,  external,  and  supernatural  cause  of  their  exist- 
ence in  this  place  and  not  in  other  places.  This  implies 
choice — will — God. 

The  physical  refutation  of  the  self-existence  of  the  uni- 
verse is  completed  by  the  discovery,  that  all  the  orbs  oj 
heaven,  as  well  as  the  earth,  are  in  motion,  and  that  an  or- 
derly and  regulated  motion.'-^  The  fact  need  not  be  illus- 
trated, for  it  is  not  denied.  The  consequence  is  inevitable. 
That  which  is  self  existent  must  be  unchangeable;  for 
change  is  an  effect,  and  demands  a  cause;  and  the  cause 
must  exist  before  the  effect,  and  produce  it.  Whatsoever  is 
changeable,  then,  is  a  product  of  a  prior  cause,  and  so  not 
self-existent.  But  every  part  of  the  universe  is  changeable, 
for  it  is  in  motion,  which  is  a  change  of  place ;  and,  there- 
fore, is  not  self-existent,  but  the  product  of  a  prior  cause. 

Professor  Fick,  who  was  some  time  since  called  from 
Zurich  to  fill  the  professorship  of  physiology  at  Wurzburg, 


*  Herschel's  Outlines  of  Astronomy,  chap.  xvi. 


348  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

and  who  is  known  by  his  experiments  on  muscular  physics, 
in  a  recent  work  on  the  transformation  of  force,  brings  out 
the  argument  in  proof  of  the  non-eternity  of  our  universe 
in  a  new  form.  He  shows  that  heat  is  continually  being 
lost  by  radiation ;  and  when  mechanical  force  is  converted 
into  hrat  some  of  that  heat  can  never  be  brought  back  to 
be  mechanical  force.  And  as  this  change  from  mechanical 
force  to  heat  is  ever  going  on,  all  force  must  at  last  turn  into 
heat,  in  which  case  all  difference  of  temperature  would  be 
lost  and  universal  stagnation  and  death  would  be  the  result. 
He  then  concludes  in  the  following  words,  which  we  quote 
from  Nature,  Macmillan's  weekly:  "We  are  come  to  this 
alternative ;  either  in  our  highest,  or  most  general,  our  most 
fundamental  scientific  abstractions  some  great  point  has 
been  overlooked;  or  the  universe  will  have  an  end,  and 
must  have  had  a  beginning;  could  not  have  existed  from 
eternity,  but  must  at  some  date,  not  infinitely  distant,  have 
arisen  from  something  not  forming  part  of  the  chain  of  nat- 
ural causes,  i.  e.,  must  have  been  created."* 

To  this  it  has  been  replied,  that  motion  is  the  normal 
condition  of  matter;  arising  from  the  force  of  gravitation? 
acting  in  and  upon  the  various  bodies  composing  the  uni- 
verse; and  mathematical  calculations  have  been  attempted 
to  show  how  vortices,  and  spiral  motions,  could  be  produced 
by  the  force  of  gravitation,  and  the  mutual  resistances  of 
the  atoms  originally  composing  the  universe. 

But  this  attempt  is  easily  seen  to  be  a  failure.  The  at- 
traction of  gravitation  alone  can  not  possibly  produce  any 
such  motion  as  we  behold  in  the  heavens;  nor  can  it  orig- 
inate, nor  sustain,  any  kind  of  eternal  motion  whatever. 
For  the  attraction  of  gravitation  is  always  in  right  lines; 
but  there  is  no  rectilinear  motion  in  the  heavens;  all  celes- 
tial motions  are   curvilinear.     Nor  can   the   attraction   of 


Neio  York  Eoangeliat^  May  6, 1870. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  349 

gravitation  account  for  the  maintenance  of  any  kind  of 
eternal  motion.  Its  tendency  is  to  draw  all  bodies  to  the 
center  of  gravity,  and  to  keep  them  there,  in  one  vast  heap, 
by  the  force  of  their  mutual  attraction;  thus  bringing  all 
motion  to  an  eternal  rest. 

To  this  it  is  now  replied  that  motion  is  the  equivalent  of 
light,  heat,  electricity,  and  chemical  reaction;  all  of  which 
are  convertible  into  motion.  These  are  properties  of  mat- 
ter, and  inseparable  from  it,  and  so  as  eternal  as  itself. 

We  have  already  disproved  the  eternity  of  matter;  but 
if,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  it  were  granted,  yet  would  not 
the  regulated  and  orderly  motions  of  the  universe  be  thereby 
accounted  for.  For  these  forces  either  exactly  balance  the 
force  of  gravitation,  or  they  do  not.  If  they  do  not,  and 
their  repulsion  prevails,  by  even  the  slightest  degree,  the 
particles  of  matter  had  been  driven  away  into  infinite  space 
millions  of  years  ago,  and  suns,  and  planets,  and  atheistic 
philosophers,  would  have  vanished  like  the  baseless  fabric 
of  a  vision.  But  if  the  attraction  of  gravitation  had  pre- 
vailed, by  even  the  weight  of  an  ounce,  long  ages  ago  sun, 
moon  and  stars  would  have  rushed  together  into  one  vast 
mountain  mass,  whose  attraction  would  have  been  so  great, 
that  no  living  creature  could  move  upon  its  surface,  and 
whose  parts  would  be  compressed  into  a  density  compared 
with  which  quicksilver  would  be  lighter  than  cork. 

But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  alleged,  that  these  inher- 
ent forces  of  matter  exactly  balance  its  power  of  gravita- 
tion— with  which  they  have  no  other  apparent  relation — 
then  the  argument  is  irresistible,  that  these  grains  of  sand 
and  drops  of  water  and  globes  of  granite  being  unequal  to 
such  calculations,  there  was  some  calculating  engineer  at 
work  arranging  the  motions  of  the  stars. 

No  mechanical  law  is  a  sufficient  cause  for  this  motion. 
To  allege  that  a  power  of  orderly,  regulated  motion — and 
there  is  no  other  sort  of  motion  in  heaven  or  earth — is  an 


350  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

inherent  property  of  matter,  is  simply  to  insult  our  com- 
mon sense,  and  overturn  the  foundation  of  all  reason.  For 
we  have  no  knowledge  of  matter,  and  can  have  none,  more 
certain  than  we  have  of  the  constitution  of  our  own  minds, 
which  requires  us  to  trace  up  every  change  among  material 
ohjeets  to  the  energy  and  will  of  a  person  capable  of  plan- 
ning and  effecting  the  change.  To  refer  us  to  the  law  of 
gravity  is  not  to  g/'^e  us  a  cause  for  the  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  but  only  a  name;  for  law  is  only  a  rule  of 
action.  We  demand  a  lawgiver — an  agent — a  force^  capa- 
ble of  producing  effects.  When  the  law  of  projectiles 
makes  a  cannon-ball,  and  projects  it,  we  will  believe  that 
the  law  of  gravity  made  the  worlds,  and  moves  them. 

"  Descending  within  the  mind's  interior  chambers,  I  find 
no  conviction  so  sure  of  the  existence  of  an  external  world, 
as  is  my  belief  in  the  reality  of  power — of  something  that 
sustains  succession,  and.  causes  order.  Again,  then,  whence 
this  idea,  and  what  is  it?  What  this  attribute  with  which 
I  endow  material  laws,  and  raise  them  into  forces?  Now, 
in  my  apprehension,  the  strictest  scrutiny  can  not  obtain 
for  these  inquiries  any  reply  save  one ;  we  primarily  con- 
nect the  idea  of  power  with  no  change  or  movement,  except 
an  act  or  determination  of  the  Free  Will;  but  from  such 
acts,  that  idea  is  inseparable.  If,  therefore,  in  order  to  ex- 
plain the  progress  of  material  things,  we  require  the  agency 
of  efficient  causes,  is  not  this  a  direct  and  solemn  recognition 
— through  all  form  and  transiency — of  the  necessity  of  an 
ever-present  creative  power;  a  power  requisite  and  necessary 
to  uphold — to  renew  the  universe  every  moment — or,  rather, 
to  prolong  creation  by  the  persistence  of  the  creative  act? 
And,  in  very  truth,  startling  though  it  be,  such  is  the  only 
and  ultimate  scientific  idea  of  the  divine  omnipresence. 
Law  is  not  even  the  Almighty's  minister ;  the  order  of  the 
material  world,  however  close  and  firm,  is  not  merely  the 
Almighty's  ordinance.     The  forces,  if  so  we   name  them, 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  351 

which  express  that  order,  are  not  powers  which  he  has 
evolved  from  the  silences,  and  to  whose  guardianship  he  has 
committed  all  things,  so  that  he  himself  might  repose.  No ! 
above,  below,  around,  there  is  Grod;  there  his  universal 
presence,  speaking  to  finite  creatures,  in  finite  forms,  a  lan- 
guage which  only  the  living  heart  can  understand.  In  the 
rain  and  sunshine;  in  the  soft  zephyrs;  in  the  cloud,  the 
torrent,  and  the  thunder ;  in  the  bursting  blossom,  and  the 
fading  branch ;  in  the  revolving  season,  and  the  rolling 
star;  there  is  the  infinite  essence,  and  the  mystic  develop- 
ment of  HIS  WILL."* 

2.  Scientijic  astronomy  inexorably  demolishes  the  Atheistic 
scheme  for  the  arrangement  of  the  solar  system,  hy  accident^ 
commonly  known  as  Btiffo7is  cosm,ogony. 

"Bufibn  supposed  that  the  force  of  a  comet  falling 
obliquely  on  the  sun  has  projected  to  a  distance  a  torrent 
of  the  matter  of  which  it  is  composed,  as  a  stone  thrown 
into  a  basin  causes  the  water  which  it  contains  to  splash 
out.  This  torrent  of  matter,  in  a  state  of  fusion,  has 
broken  into  several  parts,  which  have  been  arrested  at  dif- 
ferent distances  from  the  sun,  according  to  their  density,  or 
the  impetus  they  received.  They  then  united  in  spheres, 
by  the  efi'ect  of  the  motion  of  rotation,  and  condensing  by 
cold,  have  become  opaque  and  solid  planets  and  satellites. "f 

This  formation  of  worlds  by  accident,  it  is  true,  gave  no 
reason  for  the  form  of  their  orbits,  for  their  rotation  on  their 
axes,  in  one  direction,  and  that,  too,  the  direction  of  their 
motion,  nor  for  several  other  matters,  of  which  Infidels  make 
little  account,  but  about  which  plain  men  like  to  ask, 
namely:  Where  did  the  sun  come  from?  What  melted  it 
down  into  a  fluid  state,  fit  to  be  splashed  about?  Where 
did  the  comet-come  from?     And  who  threw  it  with  so  cor. 

*■  Nichol's  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  9th  edition,  272. 
t  Pontecoulant  in  System  of  the  World,  p.  70. 


352  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

rect  an  aim  through  infinite  space  as  exactly  to  hit  the  sun 
in  an  oblique  direction.  Creation,  it  seems,  was  nearly- 
missed,  after  all.  This  chaotic  theory  never  gained  much 
respect  from  men  of  science,  though  its  simplicity  speedily 
opened  it3  way  among  the  vulgar,  and  it  has  ever  been  a 
a  favorite  with  the  most  ignorant  class  of  Infidels,  number- 
ing thousands  of  warm  advocates,  even  at  the  present  day. 

It  was  thought  to  be  very  much  corroborated  by  the  dis- 
covery of  the  asteroids,  and  their  supposed  formation  by 
the  explosion  of  a  larger  body.  There  is  a  certain  propor- 
tion observed  in  the  distances  of  the  orbits  of  the  planets 
from  each  other — a  breadth  or  gauge,  as  it  were,  on  the 
celestial  railroad.  But  there  was  the  breadth  of  a  track 
between  the  orbits  of  Mars  and  Jupiter  on  which  no  train 
ran,  and  this  vacancy  excited  the  curiosity  of  astronomers. 
In  the  first  seven  years  of  this  century,  three  very  small 
planets  were  discovered,  running  near  this  track ;  and  Dr. 
Olbers,  the  discoverer  of  Pallas,  finding  that  they  were 
nearly  in  the  same  track,  and  sometimes  crossed  each  other, 
and  that  they  were  diminutively  small — bearing  about  the 
same  proportion  to  a  regular  planet  which  a  hand-car  does 
to  a  freight  train — imagined  that  they  were  formed  by  the 
explosion  of  a  large  planet;  that  the  boiler  of  the  large 
locomotive  had  burst,  the  fragments  had  all  lighted  upon 
the  track  again,  in  the  shape  of  hand-cars,  and  the  hand- 
cars had  magnanimously  resolved  to  keep  running,  and  do 
the  business  of  the  line;  and  that,  as  there  must  have  been 
material  enough  in  the  original  planet  to  make  some  thou- 
sands of  them,  more  would  be  discovered  by  watching  two 
depots,  at  the  crossings  of  the  tracks,  in  the  constellations 
Virgo  and  the  Whale,  where  they  must  all  pass.  In  fact, 
he  did  himself  find  another,  very  near  one  of  these  nodes; 
more  recently  many  others  have  been  found;  and  astrono- 
mers now  expect  to  hear  of  one  or  two  more  every  year. 

At  first  sight  his  theory  seemed  strengthened  by  every  new 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  353 

discovery.  It  is  true,  reflecting  men  could  not  help  won- 
dering at  such  a  marvelously  regular  explosion  as  would 
produce  beautiful  little  orderly  planets,  going  so  regularly 
too,  and  all  by  accident.  They  never  heard  of  the  blowing 
up  of  a  palace  producing  cottages,  or  the  explosion  of  a 
steamboat  throwing  ofi  the  hurricane  deck  in  the  shape  of 
whaleboats,  or  the  bursting  of  a  locomotive  producing  model 
engines,  or  even  hand-cars.  However,  as  the  theory  re- 
moved God  out  of  sight,  it  was  generally  accepted  and  freely 
used  by  Infidels,  to  show  that  the  world  had  no  need  of  a 
Creator. 

But  astronomers  saw,  that  as  each  new  asteroid  had  a 
track  of  its  own,  and  ran  to  a  different  terminus,  and  the 
roads  in  which  they  ran  were  of  different  gauges  and  grades 
— one  little  asteroid,  Pallas,  running  up  and  down  a  track 
inclined  thirty-five  degrees,  just  as  speedily  as  the  others — 
every  new  discovery  increased  the  difficulty  of  accounting 
for  their  origin  by  explosion.  But  the  discovery  of  the 
planet  Hygeia,  at  a  vast  distance  from  the  others,  utterly 
overturned  the  explosion  theory.     Loomis  says : 

"The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  our  regarding  these  small 
planets,  as  fragments  of  a  single  body,  were  well  nigh-in- 
superable before  the  discovery  of  Hygeia.  This  last  dis- 
covery has  probably  given  the  death-blow  to  the  theory  of 
Gibers.  The  orbit  of  Hygeia  completely  incloses  the  orbits 
of  several  of  the  asteroids,  its  perihelion  distance — that  is, 
its  least  distance  from  the  sun — exceeding  the  aphelion — or 
greatest  distance — of  Flora  by  twenty-five  millions  of  miles. 
No  change  of  position  of  the  orhits  could,  therefore,  bring 
these  orbits  to  a  coincidence.^ ^^ 

The  matter  has  been  finally  settled  by  the  greatest  of 
modern  mathematicians,  Leverrier,  who  has  subjected  the 
eccentricities,  distances,  and  inclinations  of  the   orbits  of 


*  Progress  of  Astronomy,  70. 
23 


354  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

the  asteroids  to  a  mathematical  investigation,  the  result  of 
which  is  as  follows: 

"  In  the  present  state  of  things,  these  eccentricities  and 
these  inclinations  are  totally  incompatible  with  Olbers'  hypo- 
thesis, which  supposed  that  the  small  planets — some  of 
which  were  discovered  even  in  his  day — were  produced  from 
the  wreck  of  a  larger  star,  which  had  exploded.  The  forces 
necessary  to  launch  the  fragments  of  a  given  body  in  such 
different  routes  (whose  existence  we  should  be  obliged  to 
suppose)  would  be  of  such  an  improbable  intensity,  that 
the  most  limited  mathematical  knowledge  could  not  but  see 
its  absurdity."  He  concludes  the  memoir  by  advancing 
four  propositions,  "  which  forever  annihilate  Olbers'  hypo- 
thesis."* 

3.  The  progress  of  astronomical  discovery  has  utterly  re- 
futed the  notion  of  creation  hy  natural  law,  known  as  the 
Development  Theory,  or  the  Nebular  Hypothesis. 

Scientific  Infidels  knew  that  there  was  too  much  order 
and  regularity  in  the  motions  of  the  planets  to  allow  any 
rational  mind  to  ascribe  these  motions  to  accident,  accord- 
ing to  Buffon's  notion.  They  saw  that  these  movements 
must  be  regulated  by  law.  La  Place,  an  eminent  mathe- 
matician, saw  that  there  are  at  least  five  great  regularities 
pervading  the  system,  for  which  Buffon's  theory  gave  no 
reason : 

1.  The  planets  all  move  in  elliptical  orbits,  nearly  circu- 
lar. They  might,  on  the  contrary,  have  been  as  elongated 
as  those  of  comets. 

2.  They  revolve  in  orbits  nearly  in  the  plane  of  the  sun's 
equator.  They  might  have  revolved  in  orbits  inclined  to  it 
at  any  angle,  or  even  in  the  plane  of  his  poles. 

3.  They  revolve  around  the  sun  all  in  the  same  direction, 
which  is  the  direction  of  his  rotation  on  his  axis. 


*  Memoirs  of  the  French  Academy,  by  M.  Leverrier;  from  The 
innual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  for  1855,  p.  376. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  355 

4.  They  rotate  on  their  axes,  also,  so  far  as  known,  in  the 
same  direction. 

5.  The  satellites  (with  the  exception  of  those  of  Uranus) 
^evolve  around  their  primary  planets,  and  also  rotate  on 
their  axes,  in  the  same  normal  direction. 

It  was  evident,  even  to  the  believers  in  chance,  that  so 
many  regularities  were  not  produced  by  accident.  La  Place 
found,  by  computing  the  chances  by  the  formula  of  proba- 
bilities, that  the  chances  were  two  millions  to  one  against 
these  regularities  happening  by  chance,  and  four  millions 
to  one  in  favor  of  these  motions  having  a  common  origin. 
The  grand  phenomenon  being  a  motion  of  rotation  in  the 
whole  system,  of  which  the  rotation  of  the  sun  is  the  cen- 
tral part,  he  thought  if  he  could  account  for  this,  he  could " 
explain  all  the  rest. 

He  set  out  by  supposing,  that  the  sun  and  planets  orig- 
inally existed  as  a  vast  cloud  of  gaseous  matter,  intensely 
heated — a  vast  fire-mist — placed  in  a  region  of  space  much 
cooler,  and  that  this  cloud,  by  gradual  cooling,  and  the  pres- 
sure of  its  parts,  settled  down  into  solid  forms.  It  was  sup- 
posed that  some  portions  of  this  cloud  would  begin  to  cool 
sooner  than  others,  and  so  become  solid  sooner,  and  that  the 
hot  gas,  rushing  to  the  solid  part,  would  form  a  vortex, 
which  would  set  the  cloud  in  motion  around  its  center  As 
the  speed  of  its  rotation  would  increase,  and  the  outside 
condense  and  grow  solid  before  the  inside,  the  cloud  would 
whirl  off  the  rings  of  solid  matter,  which  would  keep  re- 
volving in  the  same  orbits  in  which  they  were  cast  off,  and 
would  revolve  faster  and  faster  as  they  grew  cooler  and  more 
solid,  till  they  broke  up,  by  the  force  of  their  velocity,  into 
smaller  pieces ;  which  fragments,  in  their  turn,  repeated  the 
process,  until  the  present  number  of  planets  and  their  sat- 
ellites was  produced.* 


*  Horschel's  Outlines  of  Astronomy,  p.  558,  ed.  of  1853. 


356  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

This  tlieory  differs  from  BufFon's  much  as  a  low  pressure 
engine,  deriving  most  of  its  power  from  the  condenser,  dif- 
fers from  one  of  high  pressure.  La  Place  does  not  explode 
the  boiler  to  make  his  planets,  but  merely  runs  his  train  so 
fast  as  to  break  an  axle  every  now  and  then,  when  the  wheel 
runs  off  with  the  velocity  it  has  got,  and  keeps  its  track  as 
well  as  if  it  had  an  engineer  to  guide  it,  grows  into  a  little 
locomotive  by  dint  of  running,  and  after  a  while  breaks  an 
axle  too — breaking  is  a  hereditary  failing  of  these  suns  and 
planets  that  had  no  God  to  make  them — and  the  wheels  thus 
thrown  off  supply  it  with  moons  and  rings,  like  Saturn's. 
The  illustration  is  not  nearly  so  absurd  as  the  theory,  inas- 
much as  a  locomotive  is  an  incomparably  less  complicated 
contrivance  than  a  planet.  However  the  nonsense  was 
cradled  in  the  halls  of  philosophy  by  means  of  antiquity, 
and  distance. 

As  no  fiction  was  too  marvelous  for  the  credence  of  the 
Greek,  if  it  were  only  a  hundred  years  old,  or  located  be- 
yond the  Euxine,  so  to  our  development  philosopher  any 
impossibility  may  be  accepted,  if  it  can  only  be  dissolved 
into  gas,  and  located  a  good  many  millions  of  miles  away; 
and  to  make  it  an  article  of  faith  on  which  he  will  risk  his 
soul,  it  is  only  necessary  to  give  it  a  remote  antiquity.  No 
Papist  ever  insisted  more  on  antiquity  as  the  solvent  of  all 
absurdity.  Antiquity,  distance,  and  expansion  are  his  trin- 
ity, with  which  all  absurdities  become  scientific  facts. 

Herschel  had  discovered  numbers  of  nebulae,  or  luminous 
clouds,  in  the  distant  heavens  shining  with  a  distinct  light, 
but  which,  with  the  highest  magnifying  power  he  could  ap- 
ply, presented  no  trace  of  stars.  Some  nebulae,  it  is  true, 
his  largest  telescope  resolved,  like  our  own  Milky  Way,  into 
beds  of  distinct  stars ;  but  there  were  others — for  instance, 
one  in  the  belt  of  Orion — visible  to  the  naked  eye  as  a  cloud, 
but  which  his  forty  feet  telescope  only  displayed  as  a  larger 
cloud,  without  any  shape  of  stars.     Now,  reasoning  upon 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  357 

the  matter,  he  found  that  if  these  nebulae  were  composed 
of  stars  as  large  as  those  distinctly  visible,  they  must  be 
immensely  distant  to  be  indistinguishable  by  his  telescope, 
and  exceedingly  numerous  and  close  together  to  give  a  cloud 
of  light  visible  to  the  naked  eye.  In  fact,  the  suns  of  those 
firmaments  must  be  so  close  to  each  other  as  to  present  a 
blaze  of  glory,  and  complexities  of  revolution  inconceivable 
to  the  dwellers  on  earth.  But  as  this  daring  idea  seemed 
incredible,  even  to  his  giant  mind,  he  thought  the  appear- 
ance of  these  nebulae  might  be  more  rationally  accounted 
for  by  supposing  that  they  were  not  stars  at  all,  but  simply 
clouds  of  gaseous  matter,  like  the  matter  of  comets,  from 
which  he  supposed  that  stars  were  formed  by  a  long  process 
of  condensation  and  solidification.  He  thought  this  theory 
was  favored  by  the  fact,  that  nebulae  are  generally  seen  in 
those  portions  of  the  heavens  that  are  not  thickly  strewn 
with  stars;  and  also  by  the  various  forms  of  these  clouds. 
Some  were  merely  loose  clouds,  without  any  definite  form; 
others  seemed  gathering  toward  the  center.  In  some,  of  a 
roundish,  or  oval  form,  the  central  mass  seemed  well  defined. 
In  a  few,  the  process  seemed  nearly  complete,  a  bright  star 
shining  in  the  midst  of  a  faint  nebulous  halo.  Here,  then, 
it  was  said,  we  see  the  whole  progress  of  the  growth  of  stars ; 
their  development  from  the  gaseous  nebulous  fluid  into  solid, 
brilliant  suns.  La  Place  accepted  Herschel's  discoveries  as 
conclusive  proof  of  the  truth  of  his  theory,  and  it  was  gen- 
erally accepted  by  the  scientific  world.  Oddly  enough,  In- 
fidels seem  not  to  have  noticed  that  those  appearances  of 
condensation  toward  the  center,  which  seemed  to  Herschel  so 
strongly  in  favor  of  his  theory  of  the  nebulous  fluid,  were 
diametrically  opposed  to  La  Place's  requirements  of  conden- 
sation at  the  circumference ;  and  these  two  contradictory 
notions  were  supposed  to  support  each  other,  and  to  furnish 
a  solid  basis  for  the  development  hypothesis. 

This  theory,  as  stated  by  Herschel,  and  expounded  by 


358  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

Nicholl,  Dick,  and  other  Christian  writers,  is  not  necessarihj 
Atheistical.  On  the  contrary,  they  allege  that  it  furnishes 
us  with  greater  evidences  of  the  power  of  God,  and  gives 
us  higher  ideas  of  his  wisdom,  to  suppose  a  system  of  crea- 
tion by  development,  under  natural  law,  than  by  a  direct 
exercise  of  his  will.  Undoubtedly,  had  God  so  pleased  he 
could  have  made  suns  from  fire -mists,  according  to  some 
plan  which  his  infinite  wisdom  could  devise,  and  his  om- 
nipotent power  could  execute ;  but  it  is  beyond  the  possi- 
bilities even  of  omniscience  and  omnipotence  to  make  worlds, 
or  to  make  anything  but  nonsense,  according  to  La  Place's 
plan.  Had  God  so  pleased,  to  make  firmaments  grow  as 
forests  do,  and  if  he  should  please  to  enable  us  to  discover 
such  celestial  growth  in  some  distant  part  of  heaven,  we 
should  have  the  same  kind  of  evidence  of  his  being/power, 
wisdom,  and  goodness  in  this  creation  by  natural  law  which 
we  now  have  from  his  providence  by  natural  law,  in  the 
growth  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  and  as  much  greater  an 
amount  of  it  as  the  heavens  are  greater  than  the  earth.  The 
first  beginning  of  primeval  elements  demands  a  Creator. 
The  contrivance  of  the  law  of  development  proclaims  a  Con- 
triver. The  force  by  which  it  operates — whether  that  of 
gravity  or  chemical  reaction — must  be  the  force  of  an  Agent. 
The  development  theory ,  then,  fails  to  account  for  the 
origin  of  the  universe^  or  even  of  our  own  world  Herbert 
Spencer,  its  most  eloquent  expounder,  admits  this.  He 
says :  "  It  remains  only  to  point  out  that  while  the  genesis 
of  the  solar  system,  and  of  countless  other  systems  like  it, 
is  thus  rendered  comprehensible,  the  ultimate  mystery  con- 
tinues as  great  as  ever.  The  problem  of  existence  is  not 
solved;  it  is  simply  removed  farther  back.  The  Nebular 
Hypothesis  throws  no  light  on  the  origin  of  diffused  mat- 
ter ;  and  diff'used  matter  as  much  needs  accounting  for  as 
concrete  matter.  The  genesis  of  an  atom  is  not  easier  to 
conceive  than  the  genesis  of  a  planet.     Nay,  indeed,  so  far 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  359 

from  making  the  universe  a  less  mystery  than  before,  it 
makes  it  a  greater  mystery.  Creation  by  manufacture  is 
a  much  lower  thing  than  creation  by  evolution.  A  man  can 
put  together  a  machine,  but  he  can  not  make  a  machine  de- 
velop itself.  The  ingenious  artisan,  able  as  some  have 
been,  so  far  to  imitate  vitality  as  to  produce  a  mechanical 
piano-forte  player,  may  in  some  sort  conceive  how,  by  greater 
skill,  a  complete  man  might  be  artificially  produced;  but  he 
is  unable  to  conceive  how  such  a  complex  organism  gradu- 
ally arises  out  of  a  minute,  structureless  germ.  That  our 
harmonious  universe  once  existed  potentially  as  formless, 
diffused  matter,  and  has  slowly  grown  into  its  present  or- 
ganized state,  is  a  far  more  astonishing  fact  than  would  have 
been  its  formation  after  the  artificial  method  vulgarly  sup- 
posed. Those  who  hold  it  legitimate  to  argue  from  phe- 
nomena to  noumena,  may  rightly  contend  that  the  Nebular 
Hypothesis  implies  a  First  Cause  as  much  transcending  *  the 
mechanical  god  of  Paley,'  as  this  does  the  fetish  of  a 
savage."* 

The  Nebular  Hypothesis,  then,  can  not  exist  without 
God.  However,  as  it  seems  to  remove  him  to  a  great  dis- 
tance from  this  present  world,  both  in  space  and  time,  it 
has  become  popular  with  Atheists. 

The  Nebular  Hypothesis,  as  presented  by  Atheists,  imag- 
ines a  state  of  primeval  matter  as  simjyle,  or  homogeneous,  of 
which  scienee  presents  no  example,  in  heaven  or  on  earth. 

This  homogeneous  condition  of  matter  is  the  very  foun- 
dation of  the  theory.  Spencer  reasons  at  great  length,  that 
all  progress  is  from  the  simple  to  the  differentiated.  And 
it  is  indispensable  for  the  Atheists  to  prove  that  the  prim- 
eval world  was  composed  of  matter  perfectly  simple  and 
homogeneous.  If  they  alleged  that  it  was  composed  of  sev- 
eral ingredients,  nobody  would  believe  them  that  this  com- 

*  Illustrations  of  Univercal  Progress,  page  298. 


360  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

pound  was  eternal.  There  is  no  conviction  of  common  sense 
stronger  than  that  every  compound  has  been  put  together 
by  some  compounder. 

They  could  not  persuade  a  child  that  a  plum  pudding  made 
itself,  or  that  a  steamship  filled  with  passengers  existed  so 
from  eternity,  much  less  a  planet  with  a  much  larger  crew 
and  company.  They  therefore  alleged  that  the  first  matter 
of  the  universe  was  perfectly  homogeneous  and  simple. 
When  common  people  objected  that  no  such  thing  was  to 
be  seen  in  this  world  nowadays,  since  all  things  here — 
stones,  water,  air,  earth,  plants,  animals — are  compounded 
and  built  up  out  of  a  great  variety  of  matters,  they  claimed 
that  this  is  the  result  of  the  growth  of  our  planet ;  but  that 
the  nebulae,  which  astronomers  see  far  away  in  the  sky,  are 
young  suns  and  planets,  just  beginning  to  condense,  and 
that  the  gas  they  consist  of  is  the  genuine,  simple,  homo- 
geneous matter  out  of  which  this  world,  and  all  worlds, 
originally  made  themselves.  They  thought  the  nebula3  were 
so  very  far  away  that  nobody  would  ever  go  there  to  see 
and  come  back  to  contradict  them ;  and  so  they  were  quite 
safe  in  pointing  to  them  as  examples  of  homogeneous  matter. 

Now  one  does  not  see,  if  the  nebula  had  been  exactly 
what  the  development  men  assert — simple,  homogeneous 
matter — how  they  could  ever  have  made  such  a  composite 
world  as  this  out  of  it,  or  indeed  how  they  could  make  any- 
thing but  itself  out  of  it.  No  chemical  actions  or  reactions 
can  begin  in  a  simple  substance;  there  must  always  be  at 
least  two  simple  substances  to  make  a  compound.  Heating 
or  cooling  a  simple  substance  will  never  make  it  a  compound. 
You  may  heat  water  in  a  boiler  and  cool  it  again  as  often  as 
you  please,  but  your  heating  and  cooling  will  never  make 
cofi'ee  out  of  it,  unless  you  put  coifee  into  it.  So  you  may 
heat  and  cool  your  simple  nebula  to  all  eternity,  but  you 
will  never  get  coffee  out  of  it,  much  less  coffee  and  coffee- 
pot, china  and  company,  with  the  biscuits  and  butter;  all 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  361 

which,  and  a  great  deal  more,  our  philosophers  contrive  to 
churn  out  of  the  primeval  homogeneous  nebula. 

But  the  progress  of  science  has  enabled  us  to  show  that 
the  nebulae,  far  from  being  simple,  homogeneous  matter, 
are  compounded  of  as  many  ingredients  as  the  flame  of  your 
lamp  or  gas  light,  which  is  combined  of  half  a  score  of  dif- 
ferent substances.  By  the  discovery  of  Spectrum  Analysis 
we  are  able  to  analyze  the  chemical  composition  of  the  most 
distant  flames,  to  tell  whether  they  proceed  from  solids  or 
gases  in  a  state  of  combustion,  and  what  are  the  gases  and 
minerals  consumed  in  them.  As  space  forbids  the  details  of 
this  discovery  here,  I  can  only  state  the  results,  namely : 
that  some  of  the  nebulae  consist  of  clouds  of  small  solid 
stars,  of  which  the  nebula  in  Orion  is  an  instance;  but 
others  consist  of  flames  of  gnses,  in  all  cases  compound,  and 
showing,  besides  the  oxygenated  flame,  the  lines  which  de- 
clare the  presence  of  hydrogen,  and  of  several  metals.  Thus 
it  is  proved,  that  no  such  eternal,  homogeneous  nebulae  are 
to  be  found  in  heaven,  and  consequently  nobody  could  ever 
make  worlds  out  of  a  substance  which  had  no  existence. 

This  theory  of  development  was  always  a  mere  notion,  a 
castle  in  the  air,  and  never  could  be  anything  more.  To 
say  that  it  was  mere  moonshine  would  be  to  give  it  far  too 
respectable  a  standing;  for  moonshine  has  a  real  existence, 
and  may  be  seen  and  felt.  But  nobody  ever  saw  or  felt  a 
homogeneous  nebula.  Indeed,  its  inventor  never  pretended 
that  he,  or  anybody  else,  ever  saw  one;  or  saw  it  sail- 
ing off"  into  moons,  and  planets,  and  suns,  or  ever  would  see 
any  such  thing.  No  scientific  man  has  ever  pretended  that 
it  was  an  established  fact,  or  anything  more  than  a  theory, 
a  notion.  Young  people,  who  are  invited  to  hazard  their 
souls  on  the  strength  of  this  miscalled  scientific  theory, 
should  remember  that  it  is  not  science,  which  means  some- 
thing a  man  knows,  but  merely  a  theory,  which  is  some  no- 
tion which  he  imagines. 


362  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

It  is  an  unsatisfactory  notion.  It  does  not  answer  tlie 
purpose  of  its  inventors.  As  we  have  already  seen,  it  gives 
us  no  account  of  the  origin  of  the  homogeneous  matter  of 
the  nebula.  It  gives  no  answer  to  the  questions,  How  did 
it  get  to  be  so  hot,  while  all  the  space  around  it  was  so  cold? 
Is  the  fire  that  heated  it  burning  still,  or  is  it  exhausted  for 
want  of  fuel?  Were  the  germs  of  all  the  plants  and  ani- 
mals in  it  while  it  was  blazing  at  a  white  heat?  If  they 
were,  how  did  they  escape  being  burnt  to  ashes?  If  they 
were  not,  where  did  they  come  from?  For  there  was  nothing 
but  that  nebula  then  in  existence.  Did  it  contain  within 
itself  all  the  principles  of  things,  all  the  forces  now  found 
in  the  worlds  which  grew  out  of  it?  If  so,  how  came  they 
there?  If  not,  how  did  attraction,  and  repulsion,  vegetable 
life,  animal  life,  intellect,  and  free  will,  work  themselves  into 
that  cloud  of  homogeneous  gas? 

Professor  Tyndall  thus  exposes  the  absurdity  of  the  sup- 
position that  the  nebula  contained  the  elements  of  mind: 
"For  what  are  the  core  and  essence  of  this  hypothesis? 
Strip  it  naked  and  you  stand  face  to  face  with  the  notion 
that  not  alone  the  more  ignoble  forms  of  animalcular  or 
animal  life,  not  alone  the  noble  forms  of  the  horse  and  lion, 
not  alone  the  exquisite  and  wonderful  mechanisms  of  the 
human  body,  but  the  human  mind  itself — emotion,  intellect, 
will,  and  all  these  phenomena,  were  once  latent  in  a  fiery 
cloud.  Surely  the  mere  statement  of  such  a  notion  is  more 
than  a  refutation."* 

It  was  only  one  of  several  contradictory  notions.  Thus 
a  writer  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  so  far  from  accepting  the 
notion  that  the  sun  and  earth  are  solidifying  and  cooling 
down,  as  explanatory  of  the  facts  revealed  by  astronomy 
and  geology,  infers  the  very  contrary  from  the  acknowledged 
facts,  namely,  that  we  are  coming  up  to  the  nebular  condi- 

*  Fragments  of  Science  and  Scientific  Thought,  p.  163. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  TOE  STARS.  363 

tion,  rather  than  developing  from  it.     He  writes  as  follows: 

"The  earth  is  progressing  by  excessively  slow  changes 
toward  the  solar  and  nebulous  condition.  Its  history  is  a 
repetition  of  the  solar,  and  a  time  must  arrive  when  the 
surface,  becoming  incandescent,  will  be  obscured  only  by 
casual  dark  pits  in  a  brilliant  atmosphere,  a  souvenir  of  the 
present  darkness  of  the  crust;  yet  during  a  certain  period, 
within  fixed  limits  of  gravitating  force  and  heat  of  mass, 
the  human  race  may  continue  to  exist ;  progressing,  we  may 
suppose,  in  force  and  fineness  of  organization.  The  race 
will  perish,  perhaps,  in  the  order  of  nature,  hj  failure  or 
insufficient  number  of  oiFspring,  a  principal  cause  of  the 
extinction  of  superior  races.  The  earth  must  become  lone 
and  voiceless  long  before  the  incandescence  of  the  crust. 
Science  may  follow  it  into  the  condition  of  an  attendant 
star,  and  then  of  an  expanding  nebula. 

"  In  the  cosmos  all  movements  are  cyclical,  and  recurrent, 
without  change,  save  interchange  among  forms  of  motion. 
A  universe  which  is,  in  its  total,  the  same  to-day  as  yester- 
day, and  always,  would  appear  idle  and  dull  if  it  were  not 
the  footstool  of  divine  force,  upon  which  the  creative  will 
maintains  a  certain  equipoise,  necessary  to  the  continued 
production  of  spiritual  forms." 

It  is  an  impractlcahle  notion,  contrary  to  the  first  prin- 
ciple of  mechanics,  that  action  and  reaction  are  equal. 

The  grand  requirement  of  the  system — power  to  work  the 
engine — can  never  be  raised  by  La  Place's,  nor  by  any  other 
mechanical  plan.  The  cooling  cloud  of  fire-mist  is  simply 
a  very  big  machine,  and  no  machine  can  generate  power  to 
work  itself  If  La  Place  could  have  somehow  or  other  got 
power  for  the  motion  of  rotation  outf^ide  of  his  cloud,  he 
might  have  made  it  revolve,  and  scatter  ofi"  great  lumps  of 
the  lightest  outside  stufi's,  as  your  grindstone  scatters  off 
drops  of  water  when  you  turn  it  rapidly ;  but,  having  no  such 
power,  his  theory  is  a  plan  to  make  the  grindstone  turn  itself. 


364  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

It  is,  therefore,  precisely  of  the  same  value  as  any  one  of  the 
hundred  of  ingenious  schemes  for  creating  power  by  machin- 
ery, of  the  perpetual  motion  men,  in  defiance  of  the  first 
law  of  mechanics,  that  action  and  reaction  are  equal. 

Moreover,  he  proposes  to  raise  the  power  by  making  the 
gas  cool  at  one  part  of  the  surface  faster  than  at  another, 
and  so  to  make  a  vortex  around  that  spot,  which  would  set 
the  whole  mass  to  revolving.  But  no  conceivable  reason 
can  be  alleged  why  the  homogeneous  mass  should  begin  to 
cool  at  one  place  faster  than  another,  or  indeed  why  an 
eternally  hot  mass  should  ever  begin  to  cool  at  all.  But, 
letting  that  pass,  to  make  the  required  vortex  for  the  rota- 
tion of  the  whole  mass,  it  should  not  begin  to  cool  at  any 
part  of  the  surface,  but  at  the  center,  where,  as  every  en- 
gine driver  who  ever  saw  a  condenser,  and  every  woman 
who  ever  cooled  a  dish  of  mush  knows,  it  could  not  possibly 
begin  to  cool  till  the  outside  mass  had  become  cold ;  and  so 
no  motion  could  be  produced.  This  is  so  well  known  in  the 
machine  shops  that  it  is  rare  to  find  a  machinist  own  the 
theory. 

But  even  a  more  fatal  objection  has  been  raised  by  one  of 
the  most  eloquent  expounders  of  the  theory.  Mr.  Spencer 
shows  us  that  the  mass,  condensing  under  the  influence  of 
gravitation,  so  far  from  cooling  must  necessarily  evolve  heat. 
He  is  perfectly  clear  and  decided  on  this  matter,  that  the 
condensing  mass  could  never ,  hy  any  possibility,  begin  to 
cool,  but  must  begin  to  heat,  and  go  on  heating  till  it  burst 
out  in  a  blaze.  He  says:  "Heat  must  inevitably  be  gener- 
ated by  the  aggregation  of  diffused  matter  into  a  concrete 
form;  and  throughout  our  reasonings  we  have  assumed  that 
such  generation  of  heat  has  been  an  accompaniment  of  neb- 
ular condensation."*  "While  the  condensation  and  the 
rate  of  rotation  are  progressively  increasing,  the  approach 
of  the  atoms  necessarily  generates  a  progressively  increasing 

♦Illustrations  of  Progress,  page  292. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  365 

temperature.  As  this  temperature  rises  light  begins  to  be 
evolved,  and  ultimately  there  results  a  revolving  sphere  of 
fluid  matter  radiating  intense  light  and  heat — a  sun."* 

This,  it  will  be  perceived,  is  exactly  the  reverse  of  the 
original  nebular  theory  of  a  cooling  globe,  or  spheroid  of 
homogeneous  nebular  matter,  diffused  by  intense  heat,  and 
cooling  down  into  suns,  and  moons,  and  planets.  So  far  as 
the  Spencer  system  is  accepted,  it  displaces  La  Place's 
theory,  and  the  inventor  accordingly  works  out  a  new  theory 
of  his  own,  and  equally  inconsistent  with  known  facts  and 
principles.  But  as  Mr.  Spencer  candidly  owns  that  his 
scheme  can  neither  generate  matter  nor  force,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  it  needs  no  further  discussion  in  this  connec- 
tion. 

The  fact  is  simply  this,  a  chemical  perpetual  motion  is  as 
impossible  as  a  mechanical  one.  The  discovery  of  the  con- 
vertibility of  forces  shows  this.  The  development  theory 
of  the  generation  of  motion  by  processes  of  the  self-heat- 
ing or  the  self-cooling  of  the  machine,  or  by  chemical  ac- 
tions and  reactions,  is,  in  its  last  analysis,  only  a  big  per- 
petual motion  humbug. 

Even  were  the  rotation,  and  the  cooling  process,  to  take 
place,  as  is  supposed,  no  such  results  would  proceed  from 
these  combined  operations  as  the  case  requires  ;  for,  accord- 
ing to  the  theory,  as  the  cooling  and  contracting  rings  re- 
volve in  the  verge  of  a  vortex  of  fluid  less  dense  than 
themselves,  one  of  these  two  results  must  take  place:  either, 
as  is  most  probable,  from  their  exceeding  tenuity,  the  rings 
will  break  at  once  into  fragments,  when,  instead  of  flying 
outward,  they  will  sink  toward  the  center,  and,  as  long  as 
they  are  heavier  than  the  surrounding  fluid,  they  will  stay 
there;  and,  as  the  cooling  goes  on  on  the  outside,  so  will  the 
concentration  of  the  heavier  matter,  till  we  have  one  great 

*Illustrations  of  Progress,  page  34. 


366  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

spheroid,  with  a  solid  center,  liquid  covering,  and  gaseous 
atmosphere.  A  vortex  will  never  make,  nor  allow  to  exist 
beyond  its  center,  planets  heavier  than  the  fluid  of  which 
it  is  composed.  The  other  alternative,  and  the  one  which 
La  Place  selected,  was  the  supposition  that  the  cooling  and 
contracting  rings  did  not  at  first  break  up  into  pieces,  but 
retained  their  continuity;  but,  contrary  to  all  experience 
and  reason,  he  supposed  that  these  cooling  rings  kept  con- 
tracting and  widening  out  from  the  heated  mass,  at  the 
same  time.  The  only  fluid  planetary  rings  which  we  can 
examine — those  of  Saturn — have  been  closing  in  on  the 
planet  since  the  days  of  Huygens,  and  eventually  will  be 
united  with  the  body  of  the  planet.  Every  boy  who  has 
seen  a  blacksmith  hoop  a  cart-wheel  has  learned  the  princi- 
ple, that  a  heated  ring  contracts  as  it  cools,  and  in  doing  so 
presses  in  upon  the  mass  around  which  it  clings.  But,  ac- 
cording to  this  nebular  notion,  the  fire-mist  keeps  cooling 
and  shrinking  up,  while  the  rings,  of  the  very  same  heat 
and  material,  keep  cooling  faster,  and  widening  out  from  it; 
a  piece  of  schismatical  behavior  without  a  parallel  among 
solids  or  fluids,  either  in  heaven  or  earth,  or  under  the  earth. 
Plateau's  illustration  of  the  mode  in  which  centrifugal 
force  acts  in  overcoming  molecular  attraction,  has  been  cited 
as  a  demonstration  of  the  truth  of  the  nebular  hypothesis. 
The  conditions,  however,  are  entirely  different.  By  means 
of  clock-work  he  caused  a  globule  of  oil  to  rotate  in  a  mix- 
ture of  alcohol  and  water  of  the  same  density^  thus  entirely 
getting  rid  of  the  power  of  gravitation ;  and  by  increasing 
the  velocity  he  caused  it  to  flatten  out  into  a  disc,  and  finally 
to  project  a  multitude  of  minute  drops,  which  continued 
their  revolutions  so  long  as  the  fluid  in  which  they  floated 
kept  revolving  by  the  motion  of  the  rotating  spindle,  the 
divergent  drops,  the  central  mass,  and  the  surrounding  fluid, 
being  all  the  while  of  the  same  density.  But  the  essential 
conditions  of  the  nebular  theory  are,  that  the  central  mass 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STABS.  367 

exert  an  attraction  of  gravitation  upon  all  its  part.<,  and 
therefore  he  denser  than  the  surrounding  ether  or  empty  space, 
and  that  the  cooling  and  contracting  rings  he  of  a  different 
density  from  the  rest  of  the  mass.  Their  divergence  from 
the  more  fluid  portion  is  supposed  to  arise  from  their  grow- 
ing denser.  And  Reclus  shows*  that  the  divergent  drops  owe 
their  existence  to  the  expansion,  not  to  the  contraction,  of 
the  globule  of  oil.  This  experiment,  then,  contradicts  the 
theory,  so  far  as  it  is  applicable. 

Plateau  himself  never  adduced  this  experiment  in  support 
of  the  nebular  theory;  but  having,  by  way  of  illustration, 
spoken  of  the  revolving  drops  as  satellites,  and  finding  that 
expression  misunderstood,  he  corrected  the  error  in  a  subse- 
quent paper.  He  says:  *'It  is  clear  that  this  mode  of 
formation  is  entirely  foreign  to  La  Place's  cosmogonic  hypo- 
thesis; therefore  we  have  no  idea  of  deducing  from  this 
little  experiment,  which  only  refers  to  the  effects  of  molecu- 
lar attraction,  and  not  to  those  of  gravitation,  any  argument 
in  favor  of  the  hypothesis  in  question ;  an  hypothesis  which 
in  other  respects  we  do  not  adopt ''f 

It  was  always  contrary  to  the  facts  of  astronomical  science. 
It  has  accordingly  been  repudiated  by  the  most  eminent 
astronomers. 

Sir  John  Herschel  declares  that  the  appearance  of  those 
groups,  or  clusters,  of  stars,  supposed  to  be  formed  by  the 
condensation  of  nebulae  is  quite  different  from  that  depicted 
by  this  theory,  and  that  no  traces  of  the  ring-making 
process  is  visible  among  them.  He  thus  describes  the 
appearances  of  these  groups;  exactly  the  contrary  of  that 
demanded  by  the  theory,  which  he  emphatically  disclaims, 
from  the  presidential  chair  of  the  British  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science. 


«The  Earth,  page  256. 

t  Taylor's  Scientific  Memoirs,  Vol.  Y.,  cited  in  McCosh's  Typical 
Forms  and  Special  Ends  in  Creation,  p.  403. 


*d<^  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

"If  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  demonstrated  truth,  or  as  re- 
ceiving the  smallest  support  from  any  observed  numerical 
relations  which  actually  hold  good  among  the  elements  of  the 
primary  orbits,  I  beg  leave  to  demur.  Assuredly  it  receives  no 
support  from  the  observation  of  the  effects  of  sidereal  aggre- 
gation as  exemplified  in  the  formation  of  globular  and  ellip- 
tic clusters,  supposing  them  to  have  resulted  from  such 
aggregation.  For  we  see  this  cause  working  out  in  thou- 
sands of  instances,  to  have  resulted,  not  in  the  formation  of 
a  single  large  central  body,  surrounded  by  a  few  smaller 
attendants  disposed  in  one  plane  around  it,  but  in  systems 
of  infinitely  greater  complexity,  consisting  of  multitudes  of 
nearly  equal  luminaries,  grouped  together  in  a  solid  elliptic 
or  globular  form.  So  far  then  as  any  conclusions  from  our 
observations  of  nebul83  can  go,  the  result  of  agglomerative 
tendencies  wiay  indeed  be  the  formation  of  families  of  stars 
of  a  general  and  very  striking  character,  but  we  see  nothing 
to  lead  us  to  presume  its  further  result  to  be  the  surround- 
ing of  those  stars  with  planetary  adherents."* 

This  theory  is  contradicted  hy  the  peculiarities  of  our  solar 
system.  The  orbits  of  the  comets  being  inclined  at  all  an- 
gles to  the  sun's  equator,  are  often  out  of  the  plane  of  his 
rotation,  and  so  in  the  way  of  the  theory.  The  moons  of 
Uranus  revolve  in  a  direction  contrary  to  all  the  other 
bodies,  and  fly  right  into  the  face  of  the  theory.  Accord- 
ing to  the  nebular  theory,  the  outer  planets,  first  cast  off 
from  the  sun,  ought  to  be  lighter  than  those  nearer  him,  as 
these  had  longer  pressing  near  the  middle  of  the  mass;  and 
the  sun  himself,  having  been  pressed  by  the  weight  of  all 
the  rest  of  the  system,  should  be  the  densest  body  of  the 
whole.  And  the  author  of  Hie  Vestiges  of  Creation^  in 
expounding  the  theory,  manufactures  a  set  of  facts  to  suit 
it,  and  tells  his  readers  that  the  planets  exhibit  a  progres- 


Opening  Address  to  the  British  Association,  1845. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  369 

sive  diminution  in  density  from  the  one  nearest  the  sun  to 
that  which  is  most  distant.  Our  solar  system  could  not 
have  lasted  thirty  years  had  that  been  the  case.  The  Earth, 
Venus,  and  Mars,  are  nearly  of  the  same  density.  Uranus 
is  more  dense  than  Saturn,  which  is  nearer  the  sun.  Nep- 
tune is  more  dense  than  either.  The  sun,  which  ought  to 
be  the  heaviest  of  all,  according  to  the  theory,  is  only  one- 
fourth  the  density  of  the  earth.  La  Place  himself  has 
demonstrated  that  these  densities  and  arrangements  are  in- 
dispensable to  the  stability  of  the  system.  But  they  are 
plainly  contradictory  to  his  theory  of  its  formation.* 

The  palpable  difference  of  luminosity  between  the  sun 
and  the  planets,  which,  as  they  are  all  made  of  the  very 
same  materials,  and  by  the  same  process,  according  to  this 
theory,  ought  to  be  equally  self-luminous,  is  in  itself  a  self- 
evident  refutation  of  the  nebular  hypothesis,  qr  of  any 
other  process  of  creation  by  mere  mechanical  law.  "  The 
same  power,  whether  natural  or  supernatural,  which  placed 
the  sun  in  the  center  of  the  six  primary  planets,  placed 
Saturn  in  the  center  of  the  orb  of  his  five  secondary  plan- 
ets ;  and  Jupiter  in  the  center  of  his  four  secondary  plan- 
ets ;  and  the  earth  in  the  center  of  the  moon's  orbit ;  and, 
therefore,  had  this  cause  been  a  blind  one,  without  contriv- 
ance or  design,  the  sun  would  have  been  a  body  of  the  same 
kind  with  Saturn,  Jupiter,  and  the  Earth ;  that  is,  without 
light  or  heat.  Why  there  is  one  body  in  our  system  quali- 
fied to  give  light  and  heat  to  all  the  rest,  I  know  no  reason, 
but  because  the  Author  of  the  system  thought  it  conveni- 
ent."    So  says  the  immortal  Newton. f 

The  great  expounder  of  modern  science — Humboldt — is 


«  Taking  water  as  the  unit  of  density,  Mercury  is  6.71 ;  Yenus, 
5.11;  Earth,  5.44;  Mars,  5.21;  Saturn,  0.7G;  Uranu',  0.97;  Nep- 
tune, 1.25  ;  the  Sun,  1.37.— Cosmos  IV.  p.  447. 

t  Newton's  Optics,  IV.  p.  438. 
24 


370  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

equally  explicit  in  enumerating  the  decisive  marks  of  choice 
and  will  in  the  construction  of  the  solar  system,  and  in  con- 
temptuously dismissing  the  notion  of  development  and  cre- 
ation by  natural  law  from  the  halls  of  scdence. 

"Up  to  the  present  time,  we  are  ignorant,  as  I  have  al- 
ready r<  marked,  of  any  internal  necessity — any  mechanica 
law  of  nature — which  (like  the  beautiful  law  which  connectt^ 
the  square  of  the  periods  of  revolution  with  the  cube  of 
the  major  axis)  represents  the  above-named  elements — the 
absolute  magnitude  of  the  planets,  their  density,  flattening 
at  the  poles,  velocity  of  rotation,  and  presence  or  absence  of 
moons — of  the  order  of  succession  of  the  individual  plane- 
tary bodies  of  each  group,  in  their  dependence  upon  the 
distances.  Although  the  planet  which  is  nearest  the  sun  is 
densest — even  six  or  eight  times  denser  than  some  of  the 
exterior  planets :  Jupiter,  Saturn,  Uranus,  and  Neptune — 
the  order  of  succession  in  the  case  of  Venus,  the  Earth, 
and  Mars,  is  very  irregular.  The  absolute  magnitudes  do, 
generally,  as  Kepler  has  already  observed,  increase  with  the 
distances ;  but  this  does  not  hojd  good  when  the  planets  are 
considered  individually.  Mars  is  smaller  than  the  Earth; 
Uranus  smaller  than  Saturn ;  Saturn  smaller  than  Jupiter, 
and  ^succeeds  immediately  to  a  host  of  planets,  which,  on 
account  of  their  smallness,  are  almost  immeasurable.  It  is 
true,  the  period  of  rotation  generally  increases  with  the 
distance  from  the  sun ;  but  it  is  in  the  case  of  Mars  slower 
than  in  that  of  the  Earth,  and  slower  in  Saturn  than  in 
Jupiter."*  "Owr  knowledge  of  the  primeval  ages  of  the 
world's  physical  history  does  not  extend  sufficiently  far  to 
allow  of  our  depicting  the  present  condition  of  things  as 
one  of  development.' 'f 

Sir  David  Brewster  adds  his  testimony  as  follows :  "  Geol- 
ogy does  not  pretend  to  give  us  any  information  respecting 

«  Cosmos,  IV.  p.  425. 
t  Cosmos,  III.  p.  28. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  371 

the  process  by  which  the  nucleus  of  the  earth  was  formed. 
Some  speculative  astronomers  indeed  have  presumptuously 
embarked  in  such  an  inquiry;  but  there  is  not  a  trace  of 
evidence  that  the  solid  nucleus  of  the  globe  was  formed  by 
secondary  causes,  such  as  the  aggregation  of  attenuated 
matter  diflfused  through  space ;  and  the  nebular  theory,  as  it 
has  been  called,  though  maintained  by  a  few  distinguished 
names,  has,  we  think,  been  overturned  by  arguments  which 
have  never  been  answered.  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  in  his  four 
celebrated  letters  to  Dr.  Bentley,  has  demonstrated  that  the 
planets  of  the  solar  system  could  not  have  been  thus  formed 
and  put  in  motion  round  a  central  sun."* 

4.  Astronomy  not  only  exposes  the  folly  of  past  cosmogo- 
nies, hut  demonstrates  the  impossibility  of  framing  any  true 
theory  of  creation,  and  thus  refutes  all  future  cosmogonies. 

The  grand  error  of  all  cosmogonies  lies  in  the  arrogant 
assumption,  on  which  every  one  of  them  must  be  founded, 
that  the  theorist  is  acquainted  with  all  substances,  and  all 
forces  in  the  universe,  and  with  all  the  modes  of  their  oper- 
ation ;  not  only  at  the  present  period,  and  on  this  earth,  but 
in  all  past  ages,  and  in  worlds  in  widely  different,  and  utterly 
unknown  situations;  for,  if  he  be  ignorant  of  any  substance, 
or  of  any  active  force  in  the  universe,  his  generalization  is 
avowedly  imperfect,  and  necessarily  erroneous.  That  un- 
known force  must  have  had  its  influence  in  framing  the 
world.  Its  omission,  then,  is  fatal  to  the  theory  which  neg- 
lects it.  A  theory  of  creation,  for  instance,  which  would 
neglect  the  attraction  of  gravitation  would  be  manifestly 
false.  But  there  are  other  forces  as  far  reaching,  whose 
omission  must  be  equally  fatal ;  for  instance,  the  power  of 
repulsion. 

A  conviction  of  this  truth  has  given  rise  to  a  constant 
effort  to  simplify  matters  down  to  the  level  of  our  igno- 

*  More  Worlds  Than  One,  p.  46. 


372  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

ranee,  by  reducing  all  substances  to  one,  or  at  most  two  sim- 
ple elements,  and  all  forces  to  the  form  of  one  universal 
law;  but  the  progress  of  science  utterly  blasts  the  attempt. 
Instead  of  simplifying  matters,  the  very  chemical  processes 
undertaken  with  that  view  revealed  new  substances,  and 
every  year  increases  our  knowledge  of  nature's  variety.  No 
scientific  man  now  dreams  of  one  primeval  element.  In  the 
same  way,  astronomy,  which,  it  was  boasted,  would  enable 
us  to  account  for  all  the  operations  of  the  universe,  by  re- 
ducing all  motion  to  one  mechanical  law,  has  revealed  to  us 
the  existence  of  other  forces  as  far  reaching  as  the  attrac- 
tion of  gravitation,  and  more  powerful;  and  substances 
whose  nature  and  combinations  are  utterly  unknown.  But 
every  cosmogony  is  just  an  attempt  to  simplify  matters,  by 
ignoring  the  existence  of  these  unknown  substances,  and 
mysterious  forces;  a  process  which  science  condemns,  as 
utterly  unphilosophical  and  absurd. 

Astronomy  has  shown  us  our  ignorance  of  the  substances, 
or  materials,  of  our  own  little  globe.  It  has  demonstrated 
that  the  whole  body  of  the  earth  must  have  an  average  den- 
sity equal  to  iron.  As  the  rocks  near  the  surface  are  much 
lighter,  those  toward  the  center  must  be  heavier  than  iron, 
to  make  up  this  density.  Of  what,  then,  do  they  consist? 
The  geologist  says  he  does  not  know.  No  geologist  ever  saw 
them.  No  mortal  ever  will  see  them,  and  report  their 
chemical  constitution,  their  dip,  and  the  arrangement  of 
their  strata,  to  the  American  Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science.  The  very  utmost  "  we  can  say  is  that  they 
are  unlike  anything  with  which  we  are  acquainted."  Very 
well ;  then  be  pleased  to  have  the  decency  to  abstain  from 
telling  us  how  the  world  was  made,  when  you  don't  know 
what  it  is  made  of. 

The  sun's  heat,  at  its  surface,  is  300,000  times  greater  than 
at  the  surface  of  the  earth,  but  a  tenth  of  this  amount,  col- 
lected in  the  focus  of  a  lens,  dissipates  gold  and  platinum  in 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.   '^^  »-        373 

vapor.  When  the  most  vivid  flames  which  we  can  produce 
are  held  up  in  the  blaze  of  his  rays,  they  disappear.  If  a 
cataract  of  icebergs,  a  mile  high,  and  wider  than  the  Atlan- 
tic Ocean,  were  launched  into  the  sun  with  the  velocity  of 
a  cannon-ball,  the  small  portion  of  the  sun's  heat  expended 
on  our  earth  would  convert  that  vast  mass  into  steam  as  fast 
as  it  entered  his  atmosphere  without  cooling  its  surface  in 
the  least  degree.  "  The  great  mystery,  however,  is  to  con- 
ceive how  so  enormous  a  conflagration  ( if  such  it  be)  can 
be  kept  up.  Every  discovery  in  chemical  science  here 
leaves  us  completely  at  a  loss,  or  rather  seems  to  remove 
farther  the  prospect  of  probable  explanation."*  Yet,  the 
sun  is  the  nearest  of  the  fixed  stars,  and  by  far  the  best 
known,  and  most  nearly  related  to  us.  In  fact,  we  are  de- 
pendent on  his  influences  for  life  and  health.  But  if  the 
theorist  can  not  tell  Ms  substance,  or  the  nature  and  cause  of 
the  light  and  heat  he  sends  us,  how  can  he  presume  so  far  on 
the  world's  credulity  as  to  present  a  theory  of  his  formation? 

''Astronomical  problems  accumulate  unsolved  upon  our 
hands,  because  we  can  not,  as  mechanicians,  chemists,  or 
physiologists,  experiment  on  the  stars.  Are  they  built  of 
the  same  material  as  our  pi  met?  Are  Saturn's  rings  solid, 
or  liquid?  Has  the  moon  an  atmosphere?  Are  the  atmos- 
pheres of  the  planets  like  ours?  Are  the  light  and  heat  of 
the  sun  begotten  of  combustion?  And  what  is  the  fuel 
which  feeds  these  unquenchable  fires?  These  are  questions, 
which  we  ask,  and  variously  answer,  hut  leave  unanswered 
after  alL^'f  But,  till  he  can  answer  these,  and  a  thousand 
questions  like  these,  let  no  man  presume  to  describe  the 
formation  of  these  unknown  orbs. 

Comets  constitute  by  far  the  greatest  number  of  the 
bodies  of  our  solar  system.     Arago  says  seven  millions  fre- 

*  Herschel's  Outlines,  VI.  Sect.  400. 

t  Dr.  George  Wilson,  F.  K.  S.  E.,  in  Edinburgh  Phil.  Journal, 
V.  p.  53. 


374  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

quent  it,  within  the  orbit  of  Uranus.*  They  are  the  largest 
bodies  known  to  us,  stretching  across  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  miles.  They  approach  nearer  to  this  earth  than 
any  other  bodies,  sometimes  even  involving  it  in  their  tails, 
and  generally  exciting  great  alarm  among  its  inhabitants. 
But  the  nature  of  the  transparent  luminous  matter  of  which 
they  are  composed  is  utterly  unknown.  As  they  approach 
the  sun,  they  come  under  an  influence  directly  the  opposite 
of  attraction  The  tail  streams  away  from  the  sun,  over  a 
distance  of  millions  of  miles,  and  yet  the  rate  of  the  comet's 
motion  toioard  the  sun  is  quickened,  as  though  it  were  an 
immense  rocket,  driven  forward  by  its  own  explosion. 

Further,  while  the  body  of  the  comet  travels  toward  the 
sun,  sometimes  with  a  velocity  nearly  one-third  of  that  of 
light,  the  tail  sends  forth  coruscations  in  the  opposite  direc- 
t  on,  with  a  much  greater  velocity.  The  greatest  velocity 
with  which  we  are  acquainted  on  earth  is  the  velocity  of 
light,  which  travels  a  million  of  times  faster  than  a  cannon- 
ball,  or  at  the  rate  of  195,000  miles  per  second;  but  here 
is  a  substance  capable  of  traveling  twenty-three  times 
faster,  and  here  is  a  force  propelling  it,  twenty-three  times 
greater  than  any  which  exists  on  earth.  Its  existence  was 
first  discovered  by  the  coruscations  of  the  comet  of  1807. 
"In  less  than  one  second,  streamers  shot  forth,  to  two  and 
a  half  degrees  in  length;  they  as  rapidly  disappeared,  and 
issued  out  again,  sometimes  in  proportions,  and  interrupted, 
like  our  northern  lights.  Afterward  the  tail  varied,  both  in 
length  and  breadth;  and  in  some  of  the  observations,  the 
streamers  shot  forth  from  the  whole  expanded  end  of  the 
tail,  sometimes  here,  sometimes  there,  in  an  instant,  two  and 
a  half  degrees  long ;  so  that  within  a  single  second  they  must 
have  shot  out  a  distance  of  4,600,000  miles.'\     Similar  ex- 

*  Somerville's  Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences,  p.  360. 
t  Dick's  Sidereal  Heavens,  chap.  xx. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  375 

hibitions  of  this  unknown  force  were  made  by  the  comet  of 
1811,  by  Halley's  comet,  and  several  others. 

In  these  amazing  disclosures  of  the  unknown  forces  of 
the  heavens,  do  we  not  hear  a  voice  rebuking  the  presump- 
tion of  ignorant  theorists,  with  the  questions,  Knowest  thou 
the  ordinances  of  heaven?  Canst  tliou  set  the  dominion 
thereof  in  the  earth?  Hear  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
of  modern  astronomers  expound  the  moral  bearings  of  such 
a  discovery:  "The  intimation  of  a  new  cosmical  power — I 
mean  of  one  so  unsuspected  before,  but  which  yet  can  fol- 
low a  planet  through  all  its  wanderings — throws  us  back 
once  more  into  the  indefinite  obscure,  and  checks  all  dog- 
matism. How  many  influences,  hitherto  undiscovered  by 
our  ruder  senses,  may  be  ever  streaming  toward  us,  and 
modifying  every  terrestrial  action.  And  yet,  because  we  had 
traced  one  of  these,  we  have  deemed  our  astronomy  com- 
plete !  Deeper  far,  and  nearer  to  the  root  of  things,  is  that 
world  with  which  man's  destiny  is  entwined."* 

We  can  have  no  reason,  save  our  own  self  sufficient  arro- 
gance, to  believe  that  the  discovery  of  these  two  forces  ex- 
hausts the  treasures  of  infinite  wisdom  Humboldt  thus 
well  refutes  the  folly  of  such  an  imagination :  "  The  imper- 
fectibility  of  all  empirical  science,  and  the  boundlessness 
of  the  sphere  of  observation,  render  the  task  of  explaining 
the  forces  of  matter  by  that  which  is  variable  in  matter,  an 
impracticable  one.  What  has  been  already  perceived,  by  no 
means  exhausts  that  which  is  perceptible.  If,  simply  re- 
ferring to  the  progress  of  science  in  our  own  times,  we  com- 
pare the  imperfect  physical  knowledge  of  Robert  Boyle, 
Gilbert,  and  Hales,  with  that  of  the  present  day,  and  re- 
member that  every  few  years  are  characterized  by  an  in- 
creasing rapidity  of  advance,  we  shall  be  better  able  to 
imagine  the  periodical  and  endless  changes  which  all  phi/si- 


*  Nicholl's  Solar  System,  p.  76. 


376  INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS. 

cal  sciences  are  destined  to  undergo.  New  substances  and 
new  forces  loill  he  discovered''^ 

Thus,  all  true  science,  conscious  of  its  ignorance,  ever 
leads  the  mind  to  the  region  of  faith.  Its  first  lesson,  and 
its  last  lesson,  is  humility.  It  tells  us  that  every  cosmogony, 
which  the  children  of  theory  so  laboriously  scratch  in  the 
sand,  must  be  swept  away  by  the  rising  tide  of  science. 
When  we  seek  information  on  the  great  questions  of  our 
origin  and  destiny,  and  cry,  "  Where  shall  wisdom  be  found, 
and  what  is  the  place  of  understanding?"  the  high  priests 
of  science  answer,  in  her  name,  "  It  is  not  in  me ;  the  meas- 
ure thereof  is  longer  than  the  earth,  and  broader  than  the 
sea." 

We  receive  this  honest  acknowledgment  as  an  inestimable 
boon.  We  are  saved  thereby  the  wearying  labor  of  a  vain 
and  useless  search  after  knowledge  which  lies  not  in  her 
domain.  We  come  down  to  the  Bible  with  the  profound 
conviction  that  science  can  give  us  no  definite  information 
of  our  origin,  no  certainty  of  our  destiny,  and  but  an  im- 
perfect acquaintance  with  the  laws  which  govern  this  pres- 
ent world  If  the  Bible  can  not  inform  us  on  these  all- 
important  questions,  we  must  remain  ignorant.  Science 
declares  she  can  not  teach  us.  The  Word  of  God  remains, 
not  merely  the  best,  but  absolutely  the  only,  the  last  re- 
source of  the  anxious  soul. 

The  Bible  gives  us  no  theory  of  creation.  It  simply  as- 
serts the  fact,  that  "In  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heaven  and  the  earth,"  but  does  not  tell  us  how  he  did  so. 
The  knowledge  could  be  of  no  use  to  us,  for  he  never  means 
to  employ  us  as  his  assistants  in  the  work  of  creation.  Nor 
could  we  understand  the  matter.  The  force  by  which  he 
called  the  worlds  into  being,  and  upholds  them  in  it,  exists 
in  no  creature.     "  He  stretcheth  forth  the  heavens  alone. 


*  Cosmos,  III.  p.  27. 


INFIDELITY  AMONG  THE  STARS.  377 

He  spreadeth  abroad  the  earth  by  himself."     "  He  uphold- 
eth  all  things  by  the  word  of  his  power." 

But  it  presents  anxious,  careworn,  humbled  souls  with 
something  infinitely  more  precious  than  cosmogonies ;  even 
an  explicit  declaration  of  the  love  toward  them  of  him  who 
made  these  worlds. 

"Thus  saith  the  Lord,  thy  Redeemer, 
"  And  he  who  formed  thee  from  the  womb : 
"I  am  the  Lord,  who  maketh  all  things; 
"  Who  stretcheth  forth  the  heavens  alone, 
"And  spreadeth  abroad  the  earth,  by  myself." 
"  He  healeth  the  broken  in  heart, 
"And  bindeth  up  their  wounds. 
"  He  telleth  the  number  of  the  stars, 
"  x\nd  calleth  them  all  by  their  names. 
"Great  is  our  Lord,  and  of  great  power; 
"His  wisdom  is  infinite!" 
Yes,  the  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth,  who  upholds  all 
things  by  the  word  of  his  power,  became  a  man  like  you, 
and  dwelt  on  earth,  and  sufiered  the  sorrow,  the  shame,  the 
pain,  the  death,  that  sinful  man  deserved;  and  when  he  had 
by  himself  purged  our  sins,  sat  down  at  the  right  hand  of 
the  Majesty  on  high.     From  that  heavenly  throne  his  voice 
now  sounds,  reader,  in  your  ear,  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that 
labor  and  are  heavy-laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest," 


CHAPTEE    XI 


Daylight  Before    Sunrise. 

In  the  last  chapter  we  saw  astronomy  demonstrating  our 
need  of  a  revelation  from  God.  In  this  we  shall  see  how 
it  illustrates  and  confirms  that  revelation.  Seen  through 
the  telescope,  the  Bible  glows  with  celestial  splendor.  Even 
its  cloudy  mysteries  are  displayed  as  clouds  of  light,  and 
its  long  misunderstood  phrases  are  resolved,  by  a  scientific 
investigation,  into  galaxies  of  brilliant  truths,  proclaiming 
to  the  philosopher  that  the  Book  which  describes  them  is 
as  truly  the  Word  of  God  as  the  heavens  which  it  describes 
are  his  handiwork. 

If,  once  in  a  century,  a  profound  practical  astronomer  is 
found  denying  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  he  will  either 
acknowledge,  or  discover  himself,  not  familiar  with  its  con- 
tents. For  the  most  part,  the  charges  brought  against  the 
Bible,  of  contradicting  the  facts  of  astronomy,  are  based 
upon  misstatements  and  mistakes  of  its  teachings,  and  so 
do  not  fall  within  the  range  of  the  telescope,  or  the  depart- 
ment of  the  observatory.  The  Sabbath-school  teacher, 
and  not  the  astronomer,  is  the  proper  person  to  correct  such 
errors.  A  few  months'  instruction  in  the  Bible  class  of  any 
well-conducted  Sabbath -school  would  save  some  of  our  pop- 
ular anti-Bible  lecturers  from  the  sin  of  misrepresenting  the 
Word  of  God,  and  the  shame  of  hearing  children  laugh  at 
their  blunders. 

A  favorite  field  for  the  display  of  their  knowledge  of 
science,  and  ignorance  of  the  art  of  reading,  by  our  modern 

(378) 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  379 

Infidels,  is  the  Bible  account  of  creation,  in  the  first  chap- 
ter of  Genesis,  which  is  alleged  to  be  utterly  irreconcilable 
with  the  known  facts  of  astronomy  and  geology.  Leaving 
'Qie  latter  out  of  view,  for  the  present,  the  astronomical 
objections  may  all  be  arranged  under  four  heads.  First: 
that  the  Bible  account  of  the  creation  of  man,  only  some 
six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago,  must  be  false ;  because  the 
records  of  astronomical  observations,  taken  more  than  sev- 
enteen thousand  years  ago,  by  the  Hindoos  and  Egyptians, 
are  still  in  existence,  and  have  been  verified.  Second :  that 
the  light  of  some  of  the  stars,  now  shining  upon  us,  and 
especially  of  some  of  the  distant  nebulae,  must  have  left 
them  millions  of  years  ago,  to  have  traveled  over  the  vast 
space  which  separates  them  from  us,  and  be  visible  on  our 
globe  now;  whereas,  the  Bible  teaches  that  the  universe 
was  created  only  some  six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago. 
Third :  that  the  Bible  represents  God  as  creating  the  sky  a 
solid  crystal,  or  metallic  sphere,  or  hemisphere  (they  are  not 
agreed  which),  to  which  the  stars  are  fastened,  and  with 
which  they  revolve  around  the  earth ;  which  every  school- 
boy knows  to  be  absurd.  Fourth :  that  the  Bible  represents 
God  as  creating  the  sun  and  moon  only  two  days  before 
Adam,  and  as  creating  light  before  the  sun,  which  is  also 
held  to  be  absurd. 

1.  The  first  of  these  objections — that  the  Hindoos  and 
Egyptians  made  astronomical  observations  thousands  of  years 
before  Adam,  and  that  the  accuracy  of  these  observations 
has  been  verified  by  modern  calculations — is  simply  untrue. 
No  such  observations  were  ever  made.  The  pretended 
records  of  such  have  been  proved,  in  the  case  of  the  Hindoo 
astronomy,  to  be  forgeries,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Egyptian 
records,  blunders  of  the  discoverers.  There  is  not  an  au- 
thentic uninspired  astronomical  observation  extant  for  two 
thousand  years  after  Adam. 

The  objection,  however,  is  worth  noticing,  and  its  history 


380  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

worth  remembering,  as  a  specimen  of  the  way  in  which  ig- 
norant men  swallow  impudent  falsehoods,  if  they  only  seem 
to  contradict  the  Word  of  Truth.  When  the  labors  of 
oriental  scholars  had  made  the  Vedas  and  Shasters — the 
sacred  books  of  the  Hindoos— accessible  to  European  phi- 
losophers, a  wonderful  shout  was  raised  among  Infidels. 
"Here,"  it  was  said,  "is  the  true  chronology.  We  always 
knew  that  man  was  not  a  degenerate  creature,  fallen  from  a 
higher  estate,  some  few  thousand  years  ago,  but  that  he  has 
existed  from  eternity,  in  a  constant  progress  toward  his 
present  lofty  position;  and  now  we  have  the  most  authentic 
records  of  the  most  ancient  and  civilized  people  in  the 
world — the  people  of  India — reaching  back  for  millions  of 
years  before  the  Mosaic  cosmogony,  and  allowing  ample 
time  for  the  development  of  the  noble  savage  into  the  cul- 
tivated philosopher.  These  records  have  every  mark  of 
truth,  giving  minute  details  of  events,  and  histories  of  suc- 
cessive lines  of  princes;  and,  moreover,  record  the  princi- 
pal astronomical  facts  of  the  successive  periods — eclipses, 
comets,  positions  of  stars,  etc. — which  attest  their  veracity. 
Henceforth,  the  Hebrew  records  must  hide  their  heads. 
Neither  as  poetry  nor  history  can  they  pretend  to  compare 
with  the  Vedas." 

The  Hindoo  Shasters  were  accordingly,  for  a  time,  in  high 
repute,  among  people  who  knew  very  little  about  them.  Even 
Dr.  Adam  Clarke  was  so  far  led  away  with  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  as  to  pollute  his  valuable  commentary  by  the  insertion 
of  the  Gitagovinda,  after  the  Chaldee  Targum  on  the  Song 
of  Solomon ;  where  the  curious  reader  can  satisfy  himself 
as  to  the  scientific  value  of  such  Pantheistic  dotings.  By 
the  Infidels  of  Britain  and  America  they  were  appealed  to 
as  standard  works  of  undoubted  authority;  and  hundreds, 
who  declared  that  it  was  irrational  credulity  to  believe  in 
the  Bible,  risked  their  souls  on  the  faith  of  the  Vedas,  of 
which  they  never  had  read  a  single  sentence! 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  381 

Now,  when  we  remember  that  these  veracious  chronicles 
reach  back  through  malm  yugs  of  4,320,000  years  of  mor- 
tals, a  thousand  of  which,  or  4,320,000,000,  make  a  halpa^ 
or  one  day  of  the  life  of  Brahma,  while  his  night  is  of  the 
same  duration,  and  his  life  consists  of  a  hundred  years  of 
such  days  and  nights,  about  the  middle  of  which  period  the 
little  span  of  our  existence  is  placed ;  that  among  the  facts 
of  the  history  are  the  records  of  the  seven  great  continents 
of  the  world,  separated  by  seven  rivers,  and  seven  chains  of 
mountains,  four  hundred  thousand  miles  high  (reaching  only 
to  the  moon) ;  of  the  families  of  their  kings,  one  of  whom 
had  a  hundred  sons,  another  only  ten  thousand,  another 
sixty  thousand,  who  were  born  in  a  pumpkin,  nourished  in 
pans  of  milk,  reduced  to  ashes  by  the  curse  of  a  sage,  and 
restored  to  life  by  the  waters  of  the  Ganges;  and  that 
among  the  astronomical  observations,  by  which  the  accuracy 
of  these  extraordinary  facts  is  confirmed,  are  accounts  of 
deluges,  in  which  the  waters  not  only  rose  above  the  tops 
of  earth's  mountains,  but  above  the  seven  inferior  and  three 
superior  worlds,  reaching  even  to  the  Pole  Star^ — we  may 
well  wonder  at  the  faith  which  could  receive  all  this  as  so 
true,  that  on  the  strength  of  it  they  rejected  the  miracles 
of  the  Bible  as  false.     Even  Voltaire  ridiculed  these  stories. 

But  a  visionary  man,  named  Baillie,  calculated  the  alleged 
observations  backward,  and  found  them  sufficiently  correct 
to  satisfy  him  that  all  the  rest  of  the  story  was  equally  true. 
It  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  him,  that  if  he  could 
calculate  eclipses  backward,  so  could  the  Hindoos.  It  is 
just  as  easy  to  calculate  an  eclipse,  or  the  position  of  a 
planet,  backward  as  forward.  If  I  watch  the  motion  of  the 
hands  of  a  clock  accurately,  and  find  that  the  little  hand 
moves  over  the  twelfth  of  a  circle  every  hour,  and  the  large 
hand  around  the  circle  in  the  same  time,  and  that  the  large 


*  Duff's  India,  127. 


382  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

hand,  now  at  noon,  covers  the  little  one,  I  can  calculate, 
that  at  at  sixteen  minutes  and  a  quarter  past  three  it  will 
nearly  cover  it  again ;  but  then,  it  is  just  as  easy  to  count 
that  the  two  hands  were  covered  at  sixteen  minutes  and  a 
quarter  before  nine  that  morning,  or  that  they  were  exactly 
in  line  at  6  A.  M.  If  my  clock  would  keep  going  at  the 
same  rate  for  a  thousand  years,  I  could  predict  the  position 
of  the  hands  at  any  hour  of  the  twenty-ninth  of  March,  of 
the  year  2857;  but  it  is  evident  that  the  very  same  calcu- 
lation applied  the  other  way  would  show  the  position  that 
the  hands  would  have  had  a  thousand  years  ago,  or  jBve 
thousand  years  ago,  just  as  well.  And  if  I  were  to  allege 
that  my  clock  was  made  by  Tubal  Cain,  before  the  flood, 
and  for  proof  of  the  fact  declare,  that  on  the  first  of  Janu- 
ary, 3857  B.  C,  at  6  o'clock  P.  M.,  I  had  seen  the  two 
hands  directly  in  line,  and  some  wiseacre  were  to  calculate 
the  time,  and  find  that  at  that  hour  the  hands  ought  to  have 
been  just  in  that  position,  and  conclude  thence  that  I  was 
undoubtedly  one  of  the  antediluvians,  and  the  clock  no  less 
certainly  a  specimen  of  the  craft  of  the  first  artificer  in 
brass  and  iron,  the  argument  would  be  precisely  parallel  to 
the  Infidel's  argument  from  the  Tirvalore  Tables,  and  the 
astronomy  of  the  Vedas. 

But  suppose  my  clock  ran  a  little  slow ;  say  half  a  min- 
ute in  the  month,  or  so ;  or  that  it  was  made  to  keep  sider- 
eal time,  which  differs  by  a  little  from  solar  time,  and  that  I 
did  not  know  exactly  what  the  difference  was ;  it  is  evident 
that  on  a  long  stretch  of  some  hundreds  or  thousands  of 
years,  I  would  get  out  of  my  reckoning,  and  the  hands 
would  not  have  been  in  the  positions  I  had  calculated.  Now, 
this  was  just  what  happened  with  the  Brahmins  and  their 
calculations  The  clock  of  the  heavens  keeps  a  uniform 
rate  of  going,  but  they  made  a  slight  mistake  in  the  count- 
ing of  it;  and  so  did  their  Infidel  friends.  But  our  modern 
astronomers  have  got  the  true  time,  set  their  clocks,  and 


t>AYLlQTlT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  383 

made  their  tables  by  it ;  and  on  applying  tbese  tables  to  the 
pretended  Hindoo  observations,  find  that  they  are  all  wrong, 
and  that  no  such  eclipses  as  they  allege  ever  did  occur  or  pos- 
sibly could  have  happened  in  our  solar  system.*  So  the  Hin- 
doo astronomy  is  now  consigned  to  the  same  tomb  with  the 
Hindoo  chronology  and  cosmogony,  except  when  a  mission- 
ary, on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges,  exhibits  it  to  the  pupils  of 
his  English  school,  as  a  specimen  of  the  falsehoods  which 
have  formed  the  swaddling  bands  of  Pantheism. 

Failing  in  the  attempt  to  substitute  Brahminism  for 
Christianity,  Infidels  beat  a  retreat  from  India,  and  went 
down  into  Egypt  for  help.  Here  they  made  prodigious 
discoveries  of  the  scientific  and  religious  truths  believed  by 
the  worshipers  of  dogs  and  dung  beetles,  recorded  upon  the 
coffins  of  holy  bulls,  and  the  temples  sacred  to  crows  and 
crocodiles.     The  age  was  favorable  for  such  dis(30veries. 

Napoleon  and  his  savans  cut  out  of  the  ceiling  of  a  tem- 
ple, at  Denderah,  in  Egypt,  a  stone  covered  with  uncouth 
astronomical,  astrological,  and  hieroglyphic  figures,  which 
they  insisted  was  a  representation  of  the  sky  at  the  time 
the  temple  was  built;  and  finding  a  division  made  between 
the  signs  of  the  crab  and  the  lion,  and  marks  for  the  sun 
and  moon  there,  they  took  it  into  their  heads  that  the  sun 
must  have  entered  the  Zodiac  at  that  spot,  on  the  year  this 
Zodiac  was  made ;  and,  calculating  back;  found  that  must  be 
at  least  seventeen  thousand  years  ago.  Hundreds  of  thou- 
sands visited  the  wonderful  antediluvian  monument,  in  the 
National  Library,  in  Paris,  where  it  had  been  brought;  and 
where  Infidel  commentators  were  never  wanting  to  inform 
them  that  this  remarkable  stone  proved  the  whole  Bible  to 
be  a  series  of  lies.  A  professor  of  the  University  of  Bres- 
lau  published  a  pamphlet,  entitled  Invincible  Proof  that  the 
Earth  is  at  least  ten  times  older  than  is  taught  hy  the  Bible. 

*  Somervi  lie's  Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences,  p.  83. 


384  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

Scores  of  such  publications  followed,  and  for  forty  years  In- 
fidel newspapers,  magazines,  and  reviews  kept  trumpeting 
this  great  reiutation  of  the  Bible.  From  these  it  descended 
to  the  vulgar,  with  additions  and  improvements;  and  it  is 
now  frequently  alleged  as  proving  that  "  ten  thousand  years 
before  Adam  was  born,  the  priests  of  Egypt  were  carving 
astronomy  on  the  pyramids."  There  is  scarcely  one  of  my 
French  or  German  readers  who  has  not  heard  of  it. 

It  did  not  shake  the  Skeptic's  credulity  in  the  least  that 
no  two  of  the  savans  were  agreed,  by  some  thousands  of 
years,  how  old  it  was — that  they  could  not  tell  what  the 
Egyptian  system  of  astronomy  was — and  that  none  of  them 
could  read  the  hieroglyphics  which  explained  it.  Whatever 
might  be  doubtful,  of  one  thing  they  were  all  perfectly  sure, 
that  it  was  far  older  than  the  creation.  But  in  1832  the 
curious  Egyptian  astronomy  was  studied,  and  it  appeared 
that  the  sun  and  moon  were  so  placed  on  the  Zodiac  to  mark 
the  beginning  of  the  year  there;  and  the  dividing  line 
fenced  off  one  half  of  the  sky  under  the  care  of  the  sun, 
while  the  other  was  placed  under  the  moon's  patronage. 
Then  it  was  discovered  that  the  positions  of  the  stars  were 
represented  by  the  pictures  of  the  gods  whose  names  they 
bore — Jupiter,  Saturn,  etc. — and  by  calculating  the  places 
of  these  pictures  back,  it  was  found  that  this  Zodiac  repre- 
sented their  places  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  37 ;  the  year  of 
the  birth  of  Nero,  a  great  temple-builder  and  repairer. 
Finally,  Champollion  learned  to  read  the  hieroglyphics,  and 
the  names,  surnames,  and  titles  of  the  emperors  Tiberius, 
Claudius,  Nero,  and  Domitian  were  found  on  the  temple  of 
Denderah;  and  on  the  portico  of  the  temple  of  Esneh, 
which  had  been  declared  to  be  a  few  thousand  years  older 
than  that  of  Denderah,  were  found  the  names  of  Claudius  and 
Antoninus  Pius;  while  the  wholfe  workmanship  and  style  of 
building  have  satisfied  all  antiquarians  that  these  buildings 
were  erected  during  the  declining  days  of  art  in  the  Roman 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE,  385 

Empire.  The  Roman  title,  autocrat,  engraved  on  the  Zodiac 
itself,  attests  its  antiquity  to  be  not  quite  two  thousand,  in- 
stead of  seventeen  thousand  years. 

But;  not  satisfied  with  merely  demolishing  the  batteries 
of  Infidelity,  astronomy  has  been  employed  to  ascertain  the 
dates  of  numbers  of  events  recorded  on  Egyptian  monu- 
ments to  have  happened  to  one  or  other  of  the  Pharaohs, 
''beloved  of  Ammon,  and  brother  of  the  sun,"  when  such  a 
star  was  in  such  a  position.  Mr.  Poole  has  spent  years  in 
gathering  such  inscriptions,  and  in  calculating  the  dates 
thus  furnished.  The  astronomer  royal,  at  Greenwich,  Mr. 
Airy,  has  reviewed  the  calculations,  and  finds  them  correct. 
Wilkinson,  the  great  Egyptologist,  agrees  with  their  con- 
clusions. And  the  result  is,  that  the  astronomical  chronology 
of  the  Egyptian  monuments  sustains  the  Bible  chronology.^ 
Geology  comes  forward  to  confirm  the  testimony  of  her 
elder  sister,  and  assures  us,  that  the  alleged  vast  antiquity 
of  the  Egyptian  monuments  is  impossible,  as  it  is  not  more 
than  5,000  years  since  the  soil  of  Egypt  first  appeared 
above  water,  as  a  muddy  morass. f  The  learned  Adrian 
Balbo  thus  sums  up  the  whole  question :  "  No  monument, 
either  astronomical  or  historical,  has  yet  been  able  to  prove 
the  books  of  Moses  false;  but  with  them,  on  the  contrary, 
agree,  in  the  most  remarkable  manner,  the  results  obtained  by 
tJie  m,ost  learned  philologists  and  the  profoundest  geometri- 
cians.'^X 

2.  To  the  second  objection — that  astronomers  have  dis- 
covered stars  whose  light  must  have  been  millions  of  years 
traveling  to  this  earth,  and  that  consequently  these  stars 
must  have  existed  millions  of  years  ago,  and  therefore  the 
Bible  makes  a  false  declaration  when  it  says  the  universe  was 

*  Poole's  Horse  Egyptiacae. 
f  Henri  L'Egypte  Pharonique. 
X  Atlas  Ethnographique,  Eth.  I. 
25 


386  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

created  only  some  six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago — I  reply 
by  asking,   Where  does  the  Bible  saij  so? 

"What,"  says  our  objector,  "is  not  that  the  good  old  or- 
thodox doctrine  of  Christians  and  commentators?  Do  they 
not  unanimously  denounce  geologists  and  astronomers  as 
heretics,  for  asserting  the  vast  antiquity  of  the  earth?" 

We  shall  see  presently  that  no  such  unanimity  of  denun- 
ciation has  ever  existed,  and  that  some  of  the  most  ancient 
and  learned  Christian  commentators  taught  the  antiquity  of 
the  earth,  from  the  Bible,  be  ."ore  geology  was  born.  But 
that  is  not  the  question  before  us  just  now.  We  are  not 
asking  what  the  good  old  orthodox  doctrine  of  Christians, 
or  the  unanimous  opinion  of  commentators  may  have  been ; 
but  what  is  the  reading  of  the  Bible —  What  does  this  Book 
say? — not,  "What  does  somebody  think?" 

"Well,"  replies  our  objector,  "does  not  the  Bible  say,  in 
the  first  of  Genesis,  that  Grod  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth  in  six  days,  and  Adam  on  the  sixth;  and  are  not 
chronologists  agreed  that  that  was  not  more  than  seven 
thousand  years  ago,  at  the  very  utmost?" 

If  the  Bible  had  said  that  God  created  the  heavens  and 
the  earth  in  six  days,  and  that  the  end  of  that  period  was 
only  seven  thousand  years  ago,  it  would  by  no  means  fol- 
low that  the  beginning  of  it  was  only  a  few  hours  before 
that;  for  every  Bible  reader  knows,  that  the  most  common 
use  of  the  word  day,  in  Scripture,  is  to  denote,  not  a  period 
of  twenty-four  hours,  but  a  period  of  time  which  may  be  ot 
various  lengths.*  In  this  very  narrative  (Genesis  ii.  5)  it 
is  used  to  denote  the  whole  period  of  the  six  days'  work : 
"  In  the  day  the  Lord  God  made  the  earth  and  the  heav- 
ens." Does  it  mean  just  twenty -four  hours  there?  In  the 
first  of  Genesis,  its  duration  is  defined  to  consist  of  "the 
evening  and  the  morning."    Before  our  Infidel  chrouologist 

*  Sei  Cruden's  Concordance,  Art.  Day. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  387 

finds  out  the  Bible  date  of  creation,  he  must  be  able  to  tell 
us  of  what  length  was  ike  evening  which  preceded  the  first 
morning^  and  with  it  constituted  the  first  day?  God  has  of 
set  purpose  placed  stumbling-blocks  for  scoffers  at  the  en- 
trance and  the  exit  of  the  Bible,  as  a  rebuke  to  pride  and 
vain  curiosity.* 

The  duration  of  the  seventh  day  is  also  hidden  from  man. 
It  is  God's  Sabbath,  on  which  he  entered  when  he  ceased 
from  the  work  of  creation,  a  rest  which  still  continues,  and 
which  he  invites  us  to  enter  into  (Hebrews  iv.  1-5)  as  a 
preparation  for  the  eternal  rest.  God's  rest  day  has  already 
lasted  six  thousand  years,  and  no  man  can  tell  how  much 
longer  it  may  last.  Perhaps  his  working  days  were  each  a^ 
long. 

But  if  our  objector  had  read  the  Bible  attentively,  he 
would  have  seen  that  it  does  not  say  that  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  in  six  days.  Before  it  begins  to  give 
any  account  of  the  six  days'  work,  it  tells  us  of  a  previous 
state  of  disorder;  and  going  back  beyond  that  again,  it 
says:  "/n  the  beginning,  God  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth."  It  is  as  self-evident  that  this  beginning  was  before 
the  six  days'  work,  as  that  the  world  must  have  existed  be- 
fore it  could  be  adjusted  to  its  present  form.  How  long  be- 
fore, the  Bible  does  not  Fay,  nor  does  the  objector  pretend 
to  know.  It  may  have  been  as  many  millions  of  years  as  he 
assigns  to  the  stars,  or  twice  as  many,  for  anything  he  knows 
to  the  contrary.  He  must  have  overlooked  the  first  two 
verses  of  the  Bible,  else  he  had  never  made  this  objection ; 
which  is  simply  a  blunder,  arising  from  incapacity  to  read  a 
few  verses  of  Scripture  correctly. 

But  it  is  replied,  "  Does  not  the  Bible  say,  in  the  fourth 
commandment,  'In  six  days  the  Lord  made  heaven,  and 
earth,  and  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is,'"  etc.?     True. 

*  Dan.  chap.  xii.  10.    Job,  chap,  xxxviii.  4.     Col.,  chap.  ii.  18. 


388  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

But  we  are  speaking  just  now  of  a  very  different  work — the 
work  of  creation.  If  any  one  does  not  know  the  difference 
between  create  and  make,  let  him  turn  to  his  dictionary,  and 
Webster  will  inform  him  that  the  primary  literal  meaning  of 
create  is,  "  To  produce  ;  to  bring  into  being  from  nothing ; 
to  cause  to  exist."  The  example  he  gives  to  illustrate  his 
definition  is  this  verse,  "  In  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth,"  But  the  primary  meaning  of  make 
is,  "  To  compel ;  to  constrain ;  "  thence,  "  to  form  of  ma- 
terials;" and  he  illustrates  the  generic  difference  between 
these  two  words  by  a  quotation  from  Dwight :  "  God  not 
only  made,  but  created ;  he  not  only  made  the  work,  but 
the  materials."  Both  words  are  as  good  translations  of  the 
Hebrew  originals,  hra,  and  oshe,  as  can  be  given. 

If  any  of  my  readers  has  not  a  dictionary  he  can  satisfy 
himself  thoroughly  as  to  the  different  meanings  of  these  two 
words,  and  of  their  equivalents  in  the  original  Hebrew,  by 
looking  at  their  use  in  his  Bible.  Thus,  he  will  find  create 
applied  to  the  creation  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  in  the 
beginning,  when  there  could  have  been  no  pre -existent  ma- 
terials to  make  them  from  ;  unless  we  adopt  the  Atheistic 
absurdity,  of  the  eternity  of  matter — that  is  to  say,  that  the 
paving -stones  made  themselves.^  Then  it  is  applied  to  the 
production  of  animal  life — verse  twenty-one — which  is  not 
a  product  or  combination  of  any  lifeless  matter,  but  a  direct 
and  constant  re  istance  to  the  chemi -al  and  mechanical  laws 
which  govern  lifeless  matter :  "  God  created  great  whales, 
and  every  living  creature  that  moveth."f  Next  it  is  applied 
to  the  production  of  the  human  race,  as  a  species  distinct 
from  all  other  living  creatures,  and  not  derived  from  any  of 
them.  "  God  created  man  in  his  own  image. "J  It  is  in  like 
manner  applied  to  all  God's  subsequent  bestowals  of  animal 

«  Chap.  I.  Did  the  World  Make  Itself  f 
t  Genesis,  chap.  i.  21. 
X  Genesis,  chap.  i.  27. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.'  389 

life  and  rational  souls,  whicK.are  directly  bestowed  by  God, 
and  are  not  in  the  power  of  any  creature  to  give.  "  Thou 
sendest  forth  thy  spirit :  they  are  created.'^  "  Remember 
now  thy  Creator,  in  the  days  of  thy  youth."*  In  all  these 
instances,  the  use  of  the  word  determines  its  literal  mean- 
ing to  be  what  Webster  defines  it :  "  To  bring  into  being 
from  nothing." 

The  metaphorical  use  of  the  word  is  equally  expressive 
of  its  literal  meaning,  for  it  is  applied  to  the  production  of 
new  dispositions  of  mind  and  soul  utterly  opposite  to  those 
previously  existing.  "  Create  in  me  a  clean  heart;  "  which 
God  thus  explains  :  "A  new  heart  will  I  give  you,  and  a  new 
spirit  will  I  put  within  you  ;  and  I  will  take  away  the  stony 
heart  out  of  your  flesh,  and  I  will  give  you  an  heart  of 
flesh. "f  The  Hebrew  word  hra  has  as  many  derivative 
meanings  as  our  English  word  create;  as  we  speak  of  "  creat- 
ing a  peer,"  "  long  abstinence  creating  uneasiness,"  etc. ; 
but  these  no  more  change  the  primitive  idea  in  the  one  case 
than  in  the  other. 

From  this  word  create^  the  Bible  very  plainly  distinguishes 
the  words  make  and  form,  using  them  as  the  complement 
of  the  former,  in  many  passages  which  speak  of  both  crea- 
tion and  making.  Thus,  man  was  both  created  and  made. 
His  life  and  soul  are  spoken  of  as  a  creation ;  his  body  as  a 
formation  from  the  dust;  his  deputed  authority  over  the 
earth  also  implies  a  primal  creation,  and  subsequent  investi- 
ture ;  and  so  both  terms  are  applied  to  it  So  the  words 
make  and  form  are  applied  to  the  production  of  the  bodies 
of  animals  from  pre-existing  materials,  while  animal  life  is 
ever  spoken  of  as  a  product  of  creative  power.  But,  that 
we  may  see  that  these  processes  are  distinct,  and  that  the 
words  which  express  them  have  distinctive  meanings,  the 

*  Psalm  civ.  30.     Eccl.  chap.  xii.  1. 

t  Psalm  11.  10.    Ezekiel,  chap,  xxxvi.  26. 


390  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

Author  of  the  Bible  takes  care  to  use  them  both  in  reference 
to  this  very  work,  in  such  a  way  that  we  can  not  fail  to  per- 
ceive he  intends  some  distinction,  unless  we  suppose  that  he 
fills  the  Bible  with  u.-eless  tautologies.  For  instance,  "  On 
the  seventh  day,  God  rested  from  all  his  work,  which  God 
created  and  made.^^  "These  are  the  generations  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth,  when  they  were  created;  in  the  day 
the  Lord  God  made  the  earth  and  the  heavens."  "  But  now 
thus  saith  the  Lord  that  created  thee,  Jacob,  and  he  that 
formed  thee,  0  Israel."  "For  thus  saith  the  Lord  that 
created  the  heavens,  God  himself,  that  formed  the  earth, 
and  made  it;  he  hath  established  it;  he  created  it  not  in 
confusion;  he  formed  it  to  be  inhabited."-!^  In  all  these 
passages  creation  is  clearly  distinguished  hom.  formation  and 
making,  if  the  Bible  is  not  a  mass  of  senseless  repetitions. 
If  create,  and  make,  and  form,  have  all  the  same  meaning, 
why  use  them  all  in  the  same  verse  ?  These,  and  many  sim- 
ilar passages,  show  that  the  Bible  teaches  the  work  of  crea- 
tion— calling  things  into  being — to  be  previous  to  and  dis- 
tinct from  the  work  of  making — forming  of  materials  already 
created. 

Between  these  two  widely  different  processes — of  the 
original  creation  of  the  universe,  and  the  subsequent  prep- 
aration of  the  habitable  earth,  by  the  six  days'  work — two 
intervening  periods  are  indicated  by  Scripture,  both  of  in- 
definite length.  The  first  of  these  is  that  which  intervened 
between  the  original  creation  and  the  period  of  disorder  in- 
dicated in  the  second  verse.  The  second  is  that  disordered 
period  during  which  the  earth  continued  witkout  form  and 
void. 

That  original  chaos  which  some  would  find  in  the  second 
verse,  never  had  any  existence,  save  in  the  brains  of  Athe-  r 
istic  philosophers.    It  is  purely  absurd.    God  never  created 

*  Genesis,  chap.  ii.  1-6.     Isaiah,  chap,  xliii.  1-7 ;  chap.  xlv.  1,  2. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  391 

a  chaos.  Man  never  saw  it.  The  crystals  of  the  smallest 
grain  of"  sand,  the  sporules  of  the  humblest  fungus  on  the 
rotten  tree,  the  animalculae  in  the  filthiest  pool  of  mud,  are 
as  orderly  in  their  arrangements,  as  perfect  after  their  kind, 
and  as  wisely  adapted  to  their  station,  as  the  angels  before 
the  throne  of  God.  And  as  man  never  saw,  so  he  has  no 
language  to  describe,  a  state  of  original  disorder;  for  every 
word  he  can  use  implies  a  previous  state  of  regularity;  as, 
disorder  tells  of  order  dissolved;  con-fusion  of  previous 
forms  melted  together.  So  the  poets  who  have  tried  to  de- 
scribe a  chaos  have  been  obliged  to  represent  it  as  the  wreck 
of  a  former  state. 

Both  the  Bible  language  and  the  Bible  narrative  corre- 
spond to  the  philosophy  and  philology  of  the  case ;  for,  by 
the  use  of  the  substantive  verb,  in  the  past  tense,  implying 
progressive  being,  according  to  the  usual  force  of  the  word 
in  Hebrew,  we  are  told  literally,  "  the  earth  became  without 
form  and  void."  Grod  did  not  create  it  so,  but  after  it  was 
created,  and  by  a  series  of  revolutions  not  recorded,  it  be- 
came disordered  and  empty.  The  Holy  Spirit  takes  care 
to  explain  this  verse,  by  quoting  it  in  Jeremiah  iv.  23,  as 
the  appropriate  symbolical  description  of  the  state  of  a  pre- 
viously existing  and  regularly  constituted  body  politic,  re- 
duced to  confusion  by  the  calamities  of  war.  Again,  he 
explains  both  the  terms  used  in  it  in  Isaiah  xxxiv.  11,  by 
u.sing  them  to  describe,  not  the  rude  and  undigested  mass  of 
the  heathen  poet,  but  the  wilderness  condition  of  a  ravaged 
country,  and  the  desolate  ruins  of  once  beautiful  and  popu- 
lous cities :  "  He  will  stretch  out  upon  it  the  line  of  confu- 
sion,  and  the  stones  of  emptiness.^'  In  both  these  cases  the 
previous  existence  of  an  orderly  and  populous  state  is  im- 
plied. And  finally,  we  are  expressly  assured,  that  the  state 
of  disorder  mentioned  in  the  second  verse  of  Genesis  i ,  was 
not  the  original  condition  of  the  earth — Isaiah  xlv.  18 — 
where  the  very  same  word  is  used  as  in  Genesis  i.  2,  "  He 


392  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

created  it  not,  teu,  disordered ,  in  confusion."  The  period  of 
the  earth's  previous  existence  in  an  orderly  state,  or  that 
occupied  by  the  revolutions  and  catastrophes  which  disor- 
dered its  surface,  is  not  recorded  in  Scripture. 

The  second  period  is  that  of  disorder,  which  must  have 
been  of  some  duration,  more  or  less,  and  is  plainly  implied 
to  have  been  of  considerable  length,  in  the  declaration  that 
"the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  moved" — literally,  was  brooding 
(a  figure  taken  from  the  incubation  of  fowls) — "  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters."  But  no  portion  of  Scripture  gives 
any  intimation  of  the  length  of  this  period. 

If,  then,  astronomers  and  geologists  assert  that  the  earth 
was  millions,  or  hundreds  of  millions  of  years  in  process  of 
preparation  for  its  present  state,  by  a  long  series  of  succes- 
sive destructions  and  renovations,  and  gradual  formations, 
there  is  not  one  word  in  the  Bible  to  contradict  that  opinion; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  very  Inany  texts  which  fully  and 
unequivocally  imply  its  truth.  But,  as  the  knowledge  of  the 
exact  age  of  the  earth  is  by  no  means  necessary  to  any  man's 
present  happiness,  or  the  salvation  of  his  soul,  it  is  nowhere 
taught  in  the  Bible.  God  has  given  us  the  stars  to  teach 
us  astronomy,  the  earth  to  teach  us  geology,  and  the  Bible 
to  teach  us  religion,  and  neither  contradicts  the  other. 

This  is  no  new  interpretation  evoked  to  meet  the  neces- 
sities of  modern  science.  The  Jewish  Rabbins,  and  those 
of  the  early  Christian  Fathers  who  gave  any  attention  to 
criticism,  are  perfectly  explicit  in  recognizing  these  dis- 
tinctions. The  doctrine  of  the  creation  of  the  world  only 
six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago  is  a  product  of  monkish 
ignorance  of  the  original  language  of  the  Bible.  But 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  Chrysostom,  and  Gregory  Nazianzen, 
after  Justin  Martyr,  teach  the  existence  of  an  indefinite 
period  between  the  creation  and  the  formation  of  all  things. 
Basil  and  Origen  account  for  the  existence  of  light  before 
the  sun,  by  alleging  that  the  sun  existed,  but  that  the  cha- 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  393 

otic  atmosphere  prevented  his  rays  from  being  visible  till 
the  first  day,  and  his  light  till  the  third. ^^  Augustine,  in 
his  first  homily,  represents  the  first  state  of  the  earth,  in 
Genesis  i.  1,  as  bearing  the  same  relation  to  its  finished 
state,  that  the  seed  of  a  tree  does  to  the  trunk,  branches, 
leaves,  and  fruit.  Horsley,  Edward  King,  Jennings,  Bax- 
ter, and  many  others,  who  wrote  during  the  last  two  cen- 
turies, but  before  the  period  of  geological  discovery, 
explained  the  second  verse  substantially  as  did  Bishop 
Patrick,  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  "  How  long  all 
things  continued  in  confusion,  we  are  not  told.  It  might 
have  been,  for  anything  that  is  here  revealed^  a  very  great 
while."  f 

Some  persons,  however,  have  supposed  that  the  chaos  of 
the  second  verse  succeeded  immediately  to  the  creation  of 
the  first,  and  that  the  six  days'  work  in  like  manner  followed 
that  instantaneously,  or  at  least  after  a  very  brief  interval, 
because  the  records  of  these  cycles  are  connected  by  the 
word  and,  which,  they  think,  precludes  the  idea  of  any 
lengthened  periods  or  intervals  But  the  slightest  reflection 
upon  the  meaning  of  the  word  will  show  that  and  can  not 
of  itself  be  any  measure  of  time,  its  use  being  to  indicate 
merely  sequence  and  connection.  When  used  historically,  it 
always  implies  an  interval  of  time ;  for  there  can  be  no  suc- 
cession without  an  interval ;  but  the  length  of  that  interval 
must  be  determined  from  the  context,  or  some  other  source. 
A  very  cursory  perusal  of  the  Bible,  either  in  English  or 
Hebrew,  will  show  that  very  often  in  its  brief  narratives, 
the  interval  indicated  by  and,  and  its  Hebrew  originals,  is 
a  very  long  time.  The  descent  of  Jacob  and  his  children 
into  Egypt  is  connected  with  the  record  of  their  deaths,  in 

*  Wiseman's  Lectures  on  the  Connection  of  Science  and  Revealed 
■Religion,  1-297. 

t  Commentary  on  Genesis  i.  2. 


394  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

the  very  next  verse,  by  this  word  and^  which  thus  includes 
nearly  the  lifetime  of  a  generation.  That  event,  again,  is 
conne;  ted  with  a  change  of  dynasty  in  Egypt,  and  the  op- 
pression and  multiplication  of  the  Israelites  there,  recorded 
in  the  next  verse,  by  the  same  word,  vau,  and;  while  the 
period  over  which  it  reaches  was  over  two  hundred  years." 
So  in  the  brief  record  of  the  family  of  Adam,  after  reciting 
the  birth  of  Seth,  the  historian  adds,  in  the  next  verse, 
"And  to  Seth  also  was  born  a  son,  and  he  called  his  name 
Enos;"  while  the  interval  thus  indicated  by  the  word  and 
was  a  hundred  and  five  years.  The  command  to  build  the 
ark,  recorded  in  the  last  verse  of  the  sixth  chapter  of  Gen- 
esis, is  connected  with  the  command  to  enter  into  it,  in  the 
first  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter,  by  this  same  word  and, 
although  we  know,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  that  the  in- 
terval required  for  the  construction  of  such  a  huge  vessel 
must  have  been  considerable ;  and  from  the  third  verse  of 
the  sixth  chapter,  we  learn  that  it  was  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years.  So  the  births  and  deaths  of  the  antediluvians  are 
connected  by  this  same  word  and,  throughout  the  fifth 
chapter  of  Genesis ;  while  the  interval,  as  we  see  from  the 
narrative,  was  often  eight  or  nine  hundred  years.  The 
descent  of  the  Holy  Spirit  upon  Christ,  to  qualify  him  for 
judging  the  world,  is  connected  with  the  actual  discharge  of 
that  office,  in  the  destruction  of  Antichrist  by  the  breath 
of  his  mouth,  by  this  word  and,-\  although  the  interval  has 
been  over  eighteen  hundred  years.  If  in  the  records  of  the 
generations  of  mortal  men,  the  word  and  is  customarily 
employed  as  a  connecting  link  in  the  narrations  of  events 
separated  by  an  interval  of  hundreds  of  years,  it  is  quite 
consistent  with  the  strictest  propriety  of  language  to  em- 
ploy it,  with  an  enlargement  proportioned  to  the  duration  of 


*  Exodus,  chap.  i.  5,  8. 
t  Isuiah,  chap.  xi.  3,  4. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  395 

the  subject  of  discourse,  to  connect  intervals  of  millions,  in 
tlie  narrative  of  the  generations  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth. 

The  Bible  uniformly  attributes  the  most  remote  antiquity 
to  the  work  of  creation.  So  far  from  supposing  man  to  be 
even  approximately  coeval  with  it,  the  emphatic  reproof  of 
human  presumption  is  couched  in  the  remarkable  words, 
"Where  wast  thou,  when  I  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
earth?"  In  majestic  contrast  with  the  frail  human  race, 
Moses  glances  at  the  primeval  monuments  of  God's  antiquity, 
as  though  by  them  he  could  form  some  faint  conceptions 
even  of  eternity,  and  sings,  "  Before  the  mountains  were 
brought  forth,  or  ever  thou  hadst  formed  the  earth  and  the 
universe,  even  from  everlasting  to  everlasting  thou  art  God  "* 

The  very  word  here  used,  the  beginning,  is  in  itself  an 
emphatic  refutation  of  the  notion  that  the  work  of  creation 
is  only  some  six  or  seven  thousand  years  old.  Geologists 
have  been  unable  to  invent  a  better,  and  have  borrowed  from 
the  Bible  this  very  form  of  speech,  to  designate  those  strata 
beyond  which  human  knowledge  can  not  penetrate — the 
primary  formations.  Burt,  with  far  greater  propriety,  the 
Holy  Spirit  uses  this  word  with  regard  to  ages,  compared 
with  which  the  utmost  range  of  the  astronomer's  or  geolo- 
gist's reasonings  is  but  as  the  tale  of  yesterday.  For  this 
word,  in  Bible  usage,  marks  the  last  promontory  on  the 
boundless  ocean  of  eternity;  the  only  positive  word  by 
which  we  can  express  the  most  remote  period  of  past  dura- 
tion. It  is  not  a  date — a  point  of  duration.  It  is  a  period 
— a  vast  cycle.  It  has  but  one  boundary ;  that  where  crea- 
tion rises  from  its  abyss.  Created  eye  has  never  seen  the 
other  shore.  It  is  that  vast  period  which  the  Bible  assigns 
to  the  manifestations  of  the  Word  of  God,  *'  whose  goings 
forth  have  been  of  old,  from  everlasting."  Carrying  our 
astonished  gaze  far  back  beyond  the  era  of  his  creature, 

*  Psalm  xc. 


396  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

man,  and  ages  before  the  "all  things"  that  were  made  by 
Him,  the  Bible  places  this  hcginnlng  on  the  very  shore  of  the 
eternity  of  God,  when  it  declares,  ^^In  the  heginning  was 
the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was 
God."*  Thus,  both  by  the  use  of  the  imperfect  tense,  was, 
denoting  continued  existence,  and  by  the  connection  of  this 
heginning  with  the  eternity  of  the  Word,  does  the  Bible 
teach  us  to  dismiss  from  our  thoughts  all  narrow  views  of 
the  period  of  duration  employed  in  manifesting  the  glory 
of  the  self-existent  Eternal  One,  and  to  raise  our  concep- 
tions to  the  highest  possible  pitch,  and  then  to  feel,  that  far 
beyond  the  grasp  of  human  calculation  lies  that  heginning 
which  includes  the  years  of  the  right  hand  of  the  Most 
High,  and  is  even  used  as  one  of  the  names  of  the  Eternal : 
"I  AM  THE  Beginning  and  the  Ending,  saith  the  Lord, 
who  is,  and  who  was,  and  who  is  to  come — the  Almighty. "f 

In  another  Bible  exhibition  of  the  eternity  of  the  Son  of 
God,  we  are  conducted  from  that  heginning,  downward, 
stage  by  stage,  from  those  periods  of  remote  antiquity  prior 
to  the  formation  of  water,  the  upheaval  of  the  mountains, 
the  alluvial  deposits,  the  subsidence  of  the  existing  sea 
basins,  and  the  adornment  of  the  habitable  parts  of  the 
earth,  to  that  comparatively  recent  event,  the  existence  of 
the  sons  of  men.  Our  ideas  of  the  eternity  of  the  love  of 
Christ  are  thus  enhanced,  by  the  vastness  of  the  ages  which 
stretch  out  between  the  human  race  and  that  beginning  when 
He  was,  as  it  were,  "  The  Lamb  slain  from  before  the  founda- 
tions of  the  world  " 

"  The  Lord  possessed  me  in  the  heginning  of  his  way^ 

"  Before  his  works  of  old. 

"  I  was  set  up  from  everlasting, 

"  From  the  heginning ^  or  ever  the  earth  was. 


*  John,  chap.  i.  1. 

f  Kevelation,  chap.  i.  8. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  397 

"When  there  were  no  depths,  I  was  brought  forth; 
"When  there  were  no  fountains,  abounding  with  water; 
"Before  the  mountains  were  settled, 
"  Before  the  hills,  was  I  brought  forth ; 
"  While  as  yet  he  had  not  made  the  earth,  nor  the  fields, 
"  Nor  the  highest  part  of  the  dust  of  the  world 
"  When  he  prepared  the  heavens,  I  was  there ; 
"  When  he  described  a  circle  upon  the  face  of  the  deep ; 
"When  he  established  the  clouds  above; 
"When  he  strengthened  the  fountains  of  the  deep; 
"  When  he  gave  to  the  sea  his  decree, 
"That  the  waters  should  not  pass  his  commandment; 
"  When  he  appointed  the  foundations  of  the  earth : 
"  Then  was  I  by  him,  as  one  brought  up  with  him ; 
"  And  I  was  daily  his  delight,  rejoicing  always  before  him: 
"Rejoicing  in  the  habitab'.e  parts  of  his  earth; 
"And  my  delights  were  with  the  sons  of  men."* 
Let  the  geologist,  then,  penetrate  as  deeply  as  he  can  into 
the  profundities  of  the  foundations  of  the  earth,  and  bring 
forth  the  monuments  of  their  hoary  antiquities :  we  will 
follow  with  the  most  unfaltering  faith,  and  receive  with  joy 
these  proofs  of  his  eternal  power  and  Godhead.     Let  the 
astronomer  raise  his  telescope,  and  reflect  on  our  astonished 
eyes  the  light  which  flashed  from  morning  stars,  on  the  tlay 
of  this  earth's  first  existence,  or  even  the  rays  which  began 
to  travel  from  distant  suns,  millions  of  years  ere  the  first 
morning  dawned  on  our  planet:  we  will  place  them  as  jewels 
in  the  crown  of  Him  who  is  the  bright  and  morning  star. 
They  shall  shed  a  sacred  luster  over  the  pages  of  the  Bible, 
and  give  new  beauties  of  illustration  to  its  majestic  sym- 
bols.   But  never  will  geologist  penetrate,  much  less  exhaust, 
the  profundity  of  its  mysteries,  nor  astronomer  attain,  much 
less  explore,  the  sublimity  of  that  beginning  revealed  in 


*  Proverbs,  chap.  viii.  22. 


398  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

its  pages;  for  eye  hatli  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  nor  hath  it 
entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  conceive,  either  the  an- 
tiquity, or  the  nature,  or  the  duration  of  the  things  which 
God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  him.  Human  science 
will  never  be  able  to  reach  the  Bible  era  of  creation.  It  is 
placed  in  an  antiquity  beyond  the  power  of  human  calcula- 
tion, in  that  sublime  sentence  with  which  it  introduces 
mortals  to  the  Eternal :  "/ii  the  heginning  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth,^' 

8.  The  third  objection  we  have  named  is  equally  un- 
founded. The  Bible  nowhere  teaches  that  the  sky  is  a  solid 
sphere,  to  which  the  stars  are  fixed,  and  which  revolves  icith 
them  around  the  earth.  I  know  that  Infidels  allege  that  the 
word  firmament,  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  conveys 
this  meaning.  It  does  not.  Neither  the  English  word,  nor 
the  Hebrew  original,  has  any  such  meaning.  As  to  the 
meaning  of  the  English  word,  T  adhere  to  the  dictionary. 
Infidels  must  not  be  allowed  to  coin  uncouth  meanings  for 
words,  different  from  the  known  usage  of  the  English 
tongue,  for  which  Webster  is  undeniable  authority.  His 
definition  of  firmament  is,  "  The  region  of  the  air ;  the  sky, 
or  heavens.  In  Scripture,  the  word  denotes  an  expanse-^a 
wide  extent;  for  such  is  the  signification  of  the  Hebrew 
word,  coinciding  with  regio,  region,  and  reach.  The  orig- 
inal, therefore,  does  not  convey  the  sense  of  solidity,  but 
of  stretching — extension.  The  great  arch  or  expanse  over 
our  heads,  in  which  are  placed  the  atmosphere  and  the 
clouds,  and  in  which  the  stars  appear  to  be  placed,  and  are 
really  seen."  The  word  firmament,  then,  conveys  no  such 
meaning  as  the  Infidel  alleges,  to  any  man  who  understands 
the  English  tongue. 

No  Hebrew  speaking  man  or  woman  ever  did,  or  ever 
could  understand  the  original  Hebrew  word  reqo  in  any 
other  sense  than  that  of  expanse;  for  the  verb  from  which 
it  is  formed  means  to  extend,  or  spread  out,  as  even  the 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  399 

Englisli  reader  may  see,  by  a  few  examples  of  its  use,  in 
the  following  passages  of  Scripture;  where  the  English 
words  by  which  the  verb  reqo  is  expressed,  are  marked  in 
italics.  "  Then  did  I  beat  them  small  as  the  dust  of  the 
earth,  and  did  stamp  them  as  the  mire  of  the  street,  and 
did  spread,  them  abroad.'^  "The  goldsmith  spreadeth  it 
oi;er  with  gold."  "Thus  saith  the  Lord:  he  that  created 
the  heavens,  and  stretched  them  out ;  he  that  spread  forth 
the  earth."  "I  am  the  Lord,  that  maketh  all  things;  that 
stretcheth  forth  the  heavens  alone,  and  spreadeth  abroad 
the  earth  by  myself."  "To  him  that  stretcheth  out  the 
earth  above  the  waters."  "The  censers  of  these  sinners 
against  their  own  souls,  let  them  make  them  broad  plates, 
for  a  covering  for  the  altar.  And  the?/  were  made  broad." 
"Hast  thou  with  him  spread  out  the  sky;"*  or,  in  Hum- 
boldt's elegant  rendering,  "the  pure  ether,  spread  (during 
the  scorching  heat  of  the  south  wind)  as  a  melted  mirror 
over  the  parched  desert,  "f  We  might  refer  to  the  opin- 
ions of  lexicographers,  all  unanimous  in  ascribing  the  same 
idea  to  the  word ;  but  the  authorities  given  above  are  con- 
clusive. The  meaning,  then,  of  the  Hebrew  word  rendered 
firmament  is  so  utterly  removed  from  the  notion  of  com- 
pactness, or  solidity,  or  metallic  or  crystalline  spheres,  that 
it  is  derived  from  the  very  opposite;  the  fineness  or  tenuity 
produced  by  processes  of  expansion.  Science  has  not  been 
able  to  this  day  to  invent  a  better  word  for  the  regions  of 
space  than  the  literal  rendering  of  the  original  Hebrew  word 
used  by  Moses — the  expanse. 

The  inspired  writers  of  the  New  Testament,  though  they 
found  the  world  full  of  all  the  absurdities  of  the  Greek 


*2  Samuel,  chap.  xxii.  43.  Isaiah,  chap.  xl.  19;  chap.  xliv.  24; 
chap.  xlii.  5.  Psahn  cxxxvi.  6.  Numbers,  chap.  xvii.  88.  Job 
chap,  xxxvii.  18. 

t  Cosmos  V.  2,  p.  GO. 


400  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

philosophy,  and  their  Greek  translations  of  the  Bible  con- 
tinually using  the  word  stereoma,  which  expressed  these 
notions,  never  used  it  but  once,  and  then  not  for  the  sky,  but 
for  the  steadfastness  of  faith  in  Christ.  Their  thus  using  it 
once  shows  that  they  were  acquainted  with  the  word,  and 
its  proper  meaning,  and  that  their  disuse  of  it  was  inten- 
tional ;  while  their  disuse  of  it,  and  choice  of  another  word 
to  denote  the  heavens,  proves  decisively  that  they  disap- 
proved of  the  absurdity  which  it  was  understood  to  express. 
Now,  whether  you  account  for  this  fact  by  admitting  their 
inspiration,  or  by  alleging  that  they  drew  their  language 
from  the  Hebrew  original,  and  not  from  the  Greek  transla- 
tion, it  is  in  either  case  perfectly  conclusive  as  to  the  scrip- 
tural meaning  of  the  word.  Indeed,  it  is  marvelous  how 
any  man  who  is  familiar  with  his  Bible,  and  knows  that  the 
Scriptures  usually  describe  the  sky  by  metaphors  convey- 
ing the  very  opposite  ideas  to  those  of  solidity  or  perma 
nence — as,  "  stretched  out  like  a  curtain,"  "  spread  abroad 
like  a  tent  to  dwell  in,"  "  folded  up  like  a  vesture,"  and  the 
like— should  allow  himself  to  be  imposed  on  by  the  impu- 
dent falsehood  of  Voltaire,  that  the  Bible  teaches  us  that 
the  sky  is  a  solid  metallic  or  crystal  hemisphere,  supported 
by  pillars. 

Those  beautiful  figures  of  sacred  poetry  in  which  the 
universe  is  represented  as  the  palace  of  the  Great  King, 
adorned  with  majestic  "  pillars,"  and  "  windows  of  heaven," 
whence  he  scatters  his  gifts  among  his  expectant  subjects 
in  the  courts  below,  have  been  grossly  abused  for  the  sup- 
port of  this  miserable  falsehood.  We  are  assured,  that  so 
ignorant  was  Moses  of  the  true  nature  of  the  atmosphere, 
and  of  the  origin  of  rain,  that  he  believed  and  taught  that 
there  was  an  ocean  of  fresh  water  on  the  outside  of  this 
metal  hemisphere,  which  covered  the  earth  like  a  great 
sugar-kettle,  bottom  upward,  and  was  supported  on  pillars ; 
and  at  the  bottom  of  the  ocean  were  trap-doors,  to  let  the 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  401 

rain  through  ;  which  trap-doors  in  the  metal  firmament  arc 
to  be  understood,  when  the  Bible  speaks  of  the  windows  of 
heaven.  Now,  the  bottom  of  an  ocean  is  an  odd  place  for 
windows,  and  a  trap -door  is  rather  a  strange  kind  of  water- 
ing-pot ;  and  if  Moses  put  the  ocean  of  fresh  water  on  the 
outside  of  his  metal  hemisphere,  he  must  have  changed  his 
notions  of  gravity  materially  from  the  time  he  planned  the 
brazen  hemisphere  for  the  tabernacle,  which  he  turned  mouth 
upward,  and  put  the  water  in  the  inside. 

While  such  writers  are  quite  clear  about  the  metal  trap- 
doors and  the  ocean,  they  have  not  yet  fully  fathomed  the 
construction  and  arrangement  of  the  pillars.  Whether  the 
Bible  teaches  that  they  are  "pillars  of  salt,"  like  Lot's 
wife,  or  of  flesh  and  blood,  like  "James,  Cephas,  and  John," 
or  such  "iron  pillars  and  brazen  walls"  as  Jeremiah  was 
against  the  house  of  Israel — whether  they  consisted  of 
"cloud  and  fire,"  like  che  pillar  Moses  describes  in  the  next 
book  as  floating  in  the  sky  over  the  camp  of  Israel,  or  are 
"pillars  of  smoke,"  such  as  ascend  out  of  the  wilderness — 
whether  they  are  those  "pillars  of  the  earth  which  tremble" 
when  God  shakes  it,  or  "  the  pillars  of  heaven  which  are 
astonished  at  his  reproof" — whether  they  are  the  pillars  of 
the  earth  and  its  anarchical  inhabitants,  which  Asaph  bore 
up,  or  are  composed  of  the  same  materials  as  Paul's  "pillar 
and  basis  of  the  truth,"  or  the  pillars  of  victory  which 
Christ  erects  "in  the  temple  of  God"* — they  have  not  yet 
decided.  Whether  the  Hebrews  understood  these  pillars 
to  be  arranged  on  the  outside  of  the  metal  hemisphere,  and 
if  so,  to  imagine  any  use  for  them  there;  or  in  the  inside, 
and  in  that  case  whether  they  kept  the  sky  from  falling 
upon  the  earth,  or  only  supported  the  earth  from  falling 

*  Genesis,  chap.  xix.  26.  Exodus,  chap,  xiii.  20;  chap,  xxxiii.  10. 
Jeremiah,  chap.  i.  18.  Galatians,  chap.  ii.  7.  Song,  chap.  iii.  6. 
Job,  chap.  ix.  6 ;  chap.  xxvi.  11.  Psalm  Ixxv.  3.  1  Timothy,  chap. 
iii.  15.     Revelation,  chap.  iii.  12. 

26 


402  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

into  the  sky,  these  learned  men  are  by  no  means  agreed. 
Having  trampled  the  pearl  into  fragments,  their  attempts  to 
combine  them  into  another  shape  are  more  amusing  than 
successful ;  and  it  is  hard  to  say  which  of  the  seven  opin- 
ions ascribed  to  the  Bible  by  Infidel  commentators  is  least 
probable.  That  opinion,  however,  will,  doubtless,  after 
more  vigorous  and  protracted  rooting,  be  discovered  and 
greedily  swallowed  amid  grunts  of  satisfaction;  an  appro- 
priate reward  of  such  laborious  stupidity. 

The  absurdities  of  the  Greek  philosophers  were  not 
drawn  from  the  Bible.  Had  the  Greeks  read  the  Bible 
more,  they  would  have  preserved  the  common  sense  God 
gave  them  a  great  deal  longer,  and  would  not,  while  profess- 
ing themselves  to  be  wise,  have  become  such  fools  as  to 
adore  blocks  and  stones,  and  dream  of  metal  firmaments. 
But  they  turned  away  their  ears  from  the  truth,  and  were 
turned  unto  such  fables  as  Infidels  falsely  ascribe  to  the 
Bible.  A  thousand  years  before  the  cycles  and  epicycles 
of  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy  were  invented,  and  before 
learned  Greeks  had  learned  to  talk  nonsense  about  crystal 
spheres,  and  trap-doors  in  the  bottom  of  celestial  oceans, 
the  writers  of  the  Bible  were  recording  those  conversations 
of  pious  philosophers  concerning  stars,  and  clouds,  and 
rain,  from  which  Galileo  derived  the  first  hints  of  the 
causes  of  barometrical  phenomena.  The  origin  of  rain,  its 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  evaporation,  and  the  mode  of 
its  distribution  by  condensation,  could  not  be  propounded 
by  Humboldt  himself  with  more  brevity  and  perspicuity 
than  they  are  expressed  by  the  Idumean  philosopher:  "He 
maketh  small  the  drops  of  water;  they  pour  down  rain  ac- 
cordiflg  to  the  vapor  thereof,  which  the  clouds  do  drop  and 
distill  upon  man  abundantly.  Also,  can  any  understand  the 
spreadings  of  the  clouds,  or  the  noise  of  his  tabernacles?"-'^ 


*  Job,  chap,  xxxvi.  27. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  403 

The  cause  of  this  rarefaction  of  cold  water  is  as  much  a 
mystery  to  the  British  Association  as  it  was  to  Elihu ;  and 
oven  were  all  the  mysteries  of  the  electrical  tension  of  va- 
lors disclosed,  "the  balancings  of  the  clouds"  would  only 
be  more  clearly  discovered  to  be,  as  the  Bible  declares,  "  the 
wonderful  works  of  Him  who  is  perfect  in  wisdom."  But 
the  gravity  of  the  atmosphere,  the  comparative  density  of 
floating  water,  and  its  increased  density  by  discharges  of 
.electricity,  were  as  well  known  to  Job  and  his  friends  as^ 
they  are  to  the  wisest  of  our  modern  philosophers.  "  He 
looketh  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  seeth  under  the  whole 
heaven,  to  mahe  weight  to  air,  and  regulate  loaters  by  meas- 
ure, in  his  making  a  law  for  the  rain,  and  a  path  for  the 
lightning  of  thunder"^  Three  thousand  years  before  the 
theory  of  the  trade  winds  was  demonstrated,  or  before 
Maury  had  discovered  the  rotation  and  revolutions  of  the 
wind-currents,  it  was  written  in  the  Bible,  "  The  wind  goeth 
toward  the  south,  and  turneth  about  to  the  north.  And  the 
wind  returneth  again,  according  to  his  circuits." -f 

Thousands  of  years  before  Newton,  Galileo,  and  Coper- 
nicus were  born,  Isaiah  was  writing  about  the  "orbit  of  the 
earth,"  and  its  insignificance  in  the  eyes  of  the  Creator  of 
the  host  of  heaven.J  Job  was  conversing  with  his  friends 
on  the  inclination  of  its  axis,  and  its  equilibrium  in  space: 
"He  spreadeth  out  the  north  over  the  empty  space,  and 
hangeth  the  earth  upon  nothing. "§ 

So  far  from  entertaining  the  least  idea  of  the  waters  of 
the  atmosphere  being  contained  either  on  the  outside  or  the 
inside  of  a  metal  or  solid  hemisphere,  the  writers  of  the 
Bible  never  once  use,  even  figuratively,  any  expression  con- 
veying it.     On^he  contrary,  the  well-known  scriptural  fig- 

*  Job,  chap,  xxviii.  24 — literal  reading. 
f  Ecclosiastes,  chap.  i.  6. 
J  Isaiah,  chap.  xl. 
§  Job,  chap.  xxvi.  7. 


404  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

Tires  for  the  fountains  of  the  rain,  are  the  soft,  elastic, 
leathern  waterskins  of  the  east,  "the  bottles  of  the  clouds," 
or  the  wide,  flowing  shawl  or  upper  garment  wherein  the 
people  of  the  east  are  accustomed  to  tie  up  loose,  scatter- 
ing substances.*  "  He  bindeth  up  the  waters  in  his  thick 
cloud,  and  the  cloud  is  not  rent  under  them."  "Who  hath 
bound  the  waters  in  a  garment;"  "As  a  vesture  thou  shalt 
change  them;"  or  the  loose,  flowing  curtains  of  a  royal 
pavilion;  or  the  extended  covering  of  a  tent:  "his  pavil- 
ion around  him  were  dark  waters,  and  thick  clouds  of  the 
skies; "  "  the  spreadings  of  the  clouds,  and  the  noise  of  his 
tabernacle;"  "he  spread  a  cloud  for  a  covering."f  In- 
stead of  the  notion  of  a  single  ocean,  the  "  number  of  the 
clouds  "  is  proverbial  in  the  ScripturesJ  for  a  multitude; 
and  in  direct  opposition  to  the  permanence  of  a  vast  metal- 
lic arch,  the  chosen  emblems  of  instability  and  transitori- 
ness,  and  of  the  utmost  rapidity  of  motion,  suitable  even 
for  the  chariot  of  Jehovah,  are  selected  from  the  heavens.g 
In  short,  there  is  not  the  slighest  vestige  of  any  founda- 
tion in  Scripture  for  the  notions  long  afterward  introduced 
by  the  Greek  philosophers.  Yet  Christians,  who  have  read 
these  passages  of  Scripture  over  and  over  again,  allow  them- 
selves to  give  heed  to  Infidels,  who  have  not,  asserting,  with- 
out the  shadow  of  proof,  that  Moses  taught  absurdities 
which  were  not  invented  for  a  thousand  years  after  his 
death.  The  Bible  gives  hints  of  many  profound  scientific 
truths;,  it  teaches  no  absurdities;  and,  instead  of  counte- 
nancing the  notion  that  the  sky  is  a  solid  metal  hemisphere^ 


*  Pwulh,  chap.  iii.  15. 

t  Job.  chap,  xxxviii.  37;  chap.  xxvi.  8;  chap,  xxxviii.  9;  chap^ 
xxxvi.  29.     Psalm  cv.  39;  Ixxvii.  17. 

X  Isaiah,  chap.  xliv.  22.  Jeremiah,  chap.  iv.  13.  Job,  chap, 
xxxviii.  87.     Proverbs,  chap.  xxx.  4. 

§  Ecclesiastes,  chap.  xi.  4.    Psalm  civ.  3.  Matthew,  chap,  xxi v.  30. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  405 

it  teaches,  both  literally  and  figuratively,  directly  the  con- 
trary. 

4.  We  come  now  to  the  fourth  objection,  that  the  Bible 
represents  God  as  creating  light  before  the  sun,  which  is 
supposed  to  be  an  absurdity,  and  as  creating  the  sun,  moon, 
and  stars  only  two  days  before  Adam.  This  is  the  only 
astronomical  objection  to  the  Bible  account  of  creation 
which  has  any  foundation  of  Scripture  statement  to  rest 
upon ;  but  we  shall  soon  see  that  here,  also.  Infidels  have 
not  done  themselves  the  justice  of  reading  the  Bible  with 
attention. 

I  have  already  corrected  that  confusion  of  ideas  and  care- 
lessness of  perusal  which  confounds  the  two  distinct  and 
different  words,  create  and  make,  so  as  to  make  both  mean 
the  same  thing.  God  created  the  heavens,  as  well  as  the 
earth,  in  the  beginning ;  a  period  of  such  remote  antiquity 
that,  in  Bible  language,  it  stands  next  to  eternity.  The 
sun  and  moon  then  came  into  being.  Through  what  changes 
they  passed,  or  when  they  were  endowed  with  the  power  of 
giving  light  to  the  universe,  the  Bible  nowhere  declares; 
but  on  the  fourth  day,  it  tells  us,  they  were  made  lights,  or, 
literally,  light-bearers,  to  this  earth.  The  comparatively  in- 
significant place  allotted  to  the  stars,  in  the  narrative  of 
this  earth's  formation,  corresponds,  with  the  strictest  pro- 
priety, to  the  nature  of  the  discourse ;  which  is  not  an  ac- 
count of  the  system  of  the  universe,  but  of  the  process  of 
preparation  of  this  earth  for  the  abode  of  man.  Compared 
with  the  influences  of  "the  two  great  light-bearers,"  those 
of  the  stars  are  very  insignificant;  since  the  sun  sheds 
more  light  and  heat  on  the  earth  in  one  day,  than  all  the 
fixed  stars  have  done  since  the  creation  of  Adam.  It  is 
evident,  from  the  words,  that  Moses  is  not  speaking  either 
of  their  original  creation,  or  of  their  actual  magnitude,  but 
of  their  appointment  and  use  in  relation  to  us,  when  he 
says,  "And  G-od  made  two  great  lighjb-bearers  (the  greater 


406  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

light-bearer  to  rule  the  day,  and  the  lesser  light  bearer  to 
rule  the  night),  and  the  stars.  And  God  set  them  in  the 
firmament  of  the  heavens,  to  give  light  upon  the  earth,  and 
to  rule  over  the  day  and  the  night,  and  to  divide  the  light 
from  the  darkness." 

Neither  here  nor  elsewhere  does  he  say  they  were  created 
at  this  time,  but  in  all  the  subsequent  references  uses  other 
words,  such  as  "prepared,"  "divided,"  "made,"  "appro- 
priated," "made  for  ruling,"  "gave;  "  a  studious  omission, 
which  shows  that  the  Author  of  the  Bible  had  not  forgotten 
how  long  it  was  since  he  had  called  them  into  being.  The 
Bible,  then,  does  not  say  that  God  created  the  sun  and  stars 
only  two  days  before  Adam. 

Another  correction  of  careless  Bible  reading  is  necessary, 
that  we  may  be  satisfied  about  what  the  Bible  does  not  say, 
ere  we  begin  to  defend  what  it  does  say.  The  Bible  does 
not  say,  nor  lead  us  to  believe,  that  the  darkness  spoken  of 
in  the  second  verse  of  the  first  of  Genesis  had  existed  from 
eternity.  Darkness  is  not  eternal ;  it  requires  the  exercise 
of  creative  power  for  its  production.  Light  is  the  eternal 
dwelling  of  the  Word  of  God.*  The  darkness  which 
brooded  over  our  earth,  at  the  period  of  its  formation,  is  very 
plainly  described  in  the  Bible  as  a  temporary  phenomenon, 
incident  to,  and  necessary  for,  the  birth  of  ocean.  It  is 
confined  by  the  adverb  of  time,  when,  to  the  period  of  con- 
densation, upheaval,  and  subsidence,  occupied  by  the  birth 
of  that"  gigantic  infant,  ^^when  it  burst  forth  as  though  it 
had  issued  from  the  womb;  when  I  made  the  cloud  a  gar- 
ment for  it,  and  thick  darkness  a  swaddling  band  for  it,  and 
broke  up  for  it  my  decreed  place,  and  set  bars  and  doors."t 
The'sua  may  have  shone  for  millions  of  years  before  upon 
the  earth,  or  might  have  been  shining  with  all  his  brilliance 

*  Isaiah,  chap.  xlv.  7.     1  John,  chap.  i.  5.    Daniel,  chap.  ii.  22. 
1  Timothy,  chap.  vi.  16. 
f  Job,  chap,  xxxviii.  9,  10.     Literally,  In  my  making,  etc. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  407 

tt  that  very  time,  while  not  a  single  ray  penetrated  the 
thick  darkness  of  the  vapors  in  which  earth  was  clothed. 
But  whether  or  not,  darkness  must,  from  its  very  nature, 
be  limited,  both  in  space  and  time.  To  speak  of  infinite 
and  eternal  darkness  is  as  unscriptural  as  it  is  absurd.  The 
source  of  light  is  Uncreated  and  Eternal.* 

Further — if  my  readers  are  not  tired  with  these  perpet- 
ual corrections  of  careless  reading  and  mistaken  meaning — 
the  light  called  into  existence  in  the  third  verse  of  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  is  as  evidently  a  difi"erent  word  from  the 
two  lights  spoken  of  in  the  fourteenth  verse,  as  the  singular 
is  diff"erent  from  the  plural ;  and  the  thing  signified  by  it 
is  as  distinct  from  the  things  spoken  of  in  the  fourteenth 
verse,  as  the  abstract  is  from  the  concrete ;  as,  when  I  say 
of  the  first,  "light  travels  195,000  miles  per  second,"  but 
mean  a  totally  distinct  subject  when  I  say,  "  Extinguish  the 
lights."  The  Hebrew  words  are  even  more  palpably  differ- 
ent, the  word  for  light,  in  the  third  verse,  being  aur,  while 
the  words  for  the  lights,  in  the  fourth  day's  work,  are 
maurt  and  at  emaur;  words  as  distinct  in  shape  and  sense 
as  our  English  words,  light  and  the  lighthouses. 

The  locality  of  the  light  of  the  third  verse  is,  moreover, 
wholly  diS"erent  from  that  of  the  light-bearers  of  the  four- 
teenth verse.  That  was  placed  on  earth — these  in  heaven. 
It  was  of  the  earth  alone  the  writer  was  speaking,  in  the 
second  verse;  the  earth  alone  is  the  subject  of  the  follow- 
ing verses.  It  was  the  darkness  of  earth  that  needed  to 
be  illuminated ;  but  there  is  not  the  remotest  hint,  in  any 
portion  of  Scripture,  that  any  other  planet  or  star  was 
shrouded  in  gloom  at  this  time.  But,  on  the  contrary,  we 
are  most  distinctly  informed  that  the  wonders  which  God 
was  performing  in  this  world  at  that  very  time  were  dis- 
tinctly visible  amid  the  cheerful  illumination  of  other  orbs, 


Revelation,  chap.  xxi.  23;  chap.  xxii.  5.    Isaiah,  chap.  Ix.  19. 


408  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

"  when  the  morning  stars  sang  together,  and  all  the  sons  of 
God  shouted  for  joy,"*  as  this  earth  emerged  from  its  tem- 
porary darkness  It  was  not  from  the  light  of  heaven,  but 
out  of  this  darkness  of  earth,  that  God,  who  stiH  draws  the 
lightning's  flash  from  the  black  thunder-cloud,  commanded 
the  light  to  shine. f  And  it  was  upon  this  earth,  and  not 
throughout  the  universe,  that  it  produced  alternate  day  and 
night.  To  extend  this  command  for  the  illumination  of  the 
darkened  earth,  so  as  to  mean  the  production  of  light  in 
general,  and  the  lighting  of  the  most  distant  telescopic,  and 
even  invisible  stars — which  are  neither  specified  in  the  com- 
mand itself,  nor  by  any  necessity  of  language  or  Scripture 
implied  in  it,  but,  on  the  contrary,  excluded,  by  the  express 
Scripture  declarations  of  the  pre-existence  of  light,  and  of 
morning  stars — is  an  outrage  alike  against  all  canons  of 
criticism,  laws  of  grammar,  and  dictates  of  common  sense. 
The  command,  "  Let  there  be  light,"  had  respect  to  this 
earth  only. 

The  Bible,  does  represent  this  earth  as  illuminated  at  a 
time  when  the  sun  was  not  visible  from  its  surface — perhaps 
not  visible  at  all.  Now,  if  any  one  will  undertake  to  scoff 
at  the  Bible  for  speaking  of  light  without  sunshine,  or  of 
the  sun  shining  upon  a  dark  earth — as  Infidels  abundantly 
do — we  demand  that  he  tell  us.  What  is  light,  and  how  is 
it  connected  with  the  sun?  If  he  can  not,  let  him  cease  to 
scoff  at  matters  too  high  for  him. 

If  he  can  tell  us,  he  knows  that  the  retardation  of  Encke's 
comet,  which  every  year  falls  nearer  and  nearer  the  sun,  has 
discovered  the  existence  of  an  attenuated  ether  in  the  ex- 
panse or  firmament ;  and  that  the  experiments  of  Afago  on 
the  polarization  of  light  have  finally  demonstrated  that  our 
sensation  of  light  is  exerted  by  a  series  of  vibrations  or 


*  Job,  chap,  xxxviii.  7. 

f  2  Corinthians,  chap.  iv.  6. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  409 

undulations  of  this  fluid,*  he  will  then  be  able  to  per- 
ceive the  propriety  with  which  the  Author  of  light  and  of 
the  Bible  speaks,  not  of  creating  light,  as  if  it  were  a  ma- 
terial substance,  but  of  forming  or  commanding  its  display. 
And  he  will  be  better  able  to  comprehend  the  beauty  and 
scientific  propriety  with  which  he  selected  the  active  parti- 
ciple of  the  verb  to  flow,  as  the  name  for  the  undulations 
of  this  fluid ;  for  the  primary  meaning  of  the  Hebrew  verb 
ar  is,  to  flow^  or,  when  used  as  a  noun,  a  flood.  "  It  shall 
be  cast  out  and  drowned,  as  by  the  flood  of  Egypt."f  And 
of  the  like  import  are  the  nouns,  iar  and  awr,  formed  from 
it.  "  Who  is  this  that  covereth  up  like  a  flood^  whose 
waters  are  moved  like  the  rivers? "J  The  philosopher,  even 
though  he  be  a  skeptic,  will  cease  to  mock  the  Bible  when 
he  reads  there,  that  6000  years  ago  its  Author  termed  light 
theflovnng — the  undvlation.  "  In  the  words  of  the  '  Son  of 
God,'  and  the  '  Son  of  Man,'  no  less  than  in  his  works,  with 
all  their  adaptation  to  the  circumstances  of  the  times  and 
persons  to  whom  they  were  originally  delivered,  are  things 
inexplicable — concealed  germs  of  an  infinite  development, 
reserved  for  future  ages  to  unfold. "§  To  the  man  of  learn- 
ing and  reflection,  this  progressive  fullness,  and  unfathom- 
able depth  of  the  Scripture,  is  a  most  conclusive  proof  that 
it  was  dictated  by  Him  in  whom  are  hid  all  the  treasures  of 
wisdom  and  knowledge. 

But  the  ignorant  scoff"ers — the  great  majority — will  mock 
on,  and  speak  evil  of  the  things  they  know  not.  Their 
mockery  is  founded  on  two  assumptions,  which  they  believe 
to  be  irrefutable ;  that  the  sun  is  the  only  possible  source 
of  light  to  the  earth ;  and  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  sun 

*  Somerville's  Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences,  Sec.  19-23. 
t  Amos,  chap.  viii.  8. 

X  .Jeremiah,  chap.  xlvi.  7.     Genesis,  chap.  xli.  1-18.    See  Park- 
hiirst's  Hebrew  Lexicon,  sub  voce. 
I  Neander. 


410  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

to  exist  without  illuminating  the  earth.  Unless  they  can 
prove  both  of  these  assumptions  to  be  true,  they  can  not 
prove  the  Bible  account  of  creation  to  be  false,  nor  even 
show  it  to  be  impossible.  Neither  of  these  assumptions  can 
possibly  be  proved  true ;  for  none  of  them  can  explore  the 
universe,  to  discover  the  sources  of  light,  nor  put  the  sun 
through  every  possible  experiment,  to  discover  that  his  light 
is  an  inseparable  quality.  The  only  thing  Infidels  can  truly 
allege  against  the  Bible  account  of  the  origin  of  light  is, 
their  ignorance  of  the  process.  The  argument  is  simply 
this :  "  God  could  not  cause  light  without  sunshine,  because 
I  doiit  know  how  he  did  it.  Nor  can  I  understand  how 
the  sun  shone  on  a  dark  earth ;  therefore,  it  is  impossible." 

These  arguments  from  ignorance  need  no  other  answer 
than  the  questions.  Do  you  know  how  the  sun  shines  at  all  ? 
Is  your  ignorance  the  measure  of  God's  wisdom  ? 

But  I  shall  demonstrate  the  utter  falsehood  of  both  these 
assumptions,  by  showing  the  actual  existence  of  many 
sources  of  light  besides  the  sun,  and  the  perfect  possibility 
of  the  existence  of  the  sun  without  sunshine,  and  of  sun- 
shine without  any  light  reaching  the  earth.  Thus,  both  the 
alleged  impossibilities  upon  which  the  argument  against  the 
truth  of  the  Bible  is  based  will  be  removed,  and  the  gross 
ignorance  of  natural  science  displayed  by  professedly  scien- 
tific scoffers  at  the  Bible  exposed.  ' 

Light,  so  far  from  being  solely  derived  from  the  sun,  ex- 
ists in,  and  can  be  educed  from,  almost  any  known  substance. 
Even  children  are  familiar  with  the  light  produced  by  the 
friction  of  two  pieces  of  quartz ;  and  no  one  needs  to  be 
informed  how  light  may  be  produced  by  the  combustion  of 
inflammable  substances.  But  the  number  of  these  sub- 
stances is  far  greater  than  is  generally  suppo>ed,  and  light 
can  be  produced  by  processes  to  which  we  do  not  generally 
apply  the  idea  of  burning.  Resins,  wool,  silks,  wood,  and 
all  kinds  of  earths   and    alkalies,  are  capable  of  emitting 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  411 

li'^ht  in  suitable  electrical  conditions ;  so  that  the  surface  of 
our  earth  may  have  been  a  source  of  light  in  past  ages,  as 
it  even  now  is,-'^  near  the  poles  and  the  equator,  flashing  its 
Aurora  Borealis  and  Aurora  Australis,  and  sending  out  its 
belts  of  Zodia'^al  light,f  far  into  the  surrounding  darkness. 

Schubert,  quoted  by  Kurtz,  says :  "  May  not  that  polar 
light,  which  is  called  the  Aurora  of  the  North,  be  the  last 
glittering  light  of  a  departed  age  of  the  world,  in  which 
the  earth  was  inclosed  in  an  expanse  of  aerial,  fluid,  from 
which,  through  the  agency  of  electric  magnetic  forces, 
streamed  forth  an  incomparably  greater  degree  of  light, 
accompanied  with  animating  warmth,  almost  in  a  similar 
mode  to  what  still  occurs  in  the  luminous  atmosphere  of 
our  sun?" 

Again,  the  metallic  bases  of  all  the  earths  are  highly  in- 
flammable. A  brilliant  flame  can  be  produced  by  the  com- 
bustion of  water.  All  the  metals  can  be  made  to  flash 
forth  lightnings,  under  suitable  electric  and  magnetic  ex- 
citements. The  crystals  of  several  rocks  give  out  light 
during  the  process  of  crystallization.  Thousands  of  miles 
of  the  earth's  surface  must  once  have  presented  the  lurid 
glow  of  a  vast  furnace  full  of  igneous  rocks.  Even  now, 
the  copper  color  of  the  moon  during  an  eclipse  shows  us 
that  the  earth  is  a  source  of  light. J  The  mountains  on  the 
surface  of  Venus  and  the  moon,  and  the  continents  and 
oceans  of  Mars,  attest  the  existence  of  upheaval  and  sub- 
sidence, and  of  volcanic  fires,  capable  of  producing  such 
phenomena,  and  of  course  of  sources  of  light  in  those  plan- 
ets, such  as  exist  on  the  earth.  We  know,  then,  most  cer- 
tainly, that  there  are  many  other  bodies  capable  of  produc- 
ing light  besides  the  sun.     That  God  could  command  the 

♦  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  196. 

f  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery.  1856. 

X  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  196.    Nicholl's  Solar  System,  184. 


412  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

light  to  shine  out  of  darkness,  and  convert  the  very  ocean 
into  a  magnificent  illumination,  the  following  facts  clearly 
prove.  "  Capt.  Bonny  castle,  coming  up  the  Gulf  of  St. 
Lawrence,  on  the  seventh  of  September,  1826,  was  roused 
by  the  mate  of  the  vessel,  in  great  alarm,  from  an  unusual 
appearance.  It  was  a  starlight  night,  when  suddenly  the 
sky  became  overcast,  in  the  direction  of  the  high  land  of 
Cornwallis  County,  and  an  instantaneous  and  intensely  vivid 
light,  resemhling  the  Aurora,  shot  out  of  the  hitherto  gloomy 
and  dark  sea,  on  the  lee  bow,  which  was  so  brilliant  that 
it  lighted  everything  distinctly,  even  to  the  mast-head.  The 
light  spread  over  the  whole  sea,  between  the  two  shores,  and 
the  waves,  which  before  had  been  tranquil,  now  began  to  be 
agitated.  Capt.  Bonnycastle  describes  the  scene  as  that  of  a 
blazing  sheet  of  awful  and  most  brilliant  light.  A  long  and 
vivid  line  of  light,  superior  in  brightness  to  the  parts  of  the 
sea  not  immediately  near  the  vessel,  showed  the  base  of  the 
high,  frowning,  and  dark  land  abreast;  the  sky  became  lower- 
ing, and  more  intensely  obscure.  Long  tortuous  lines  of  light 
showed  immense  numbers  of  large  fish,  darting  about  as  if 
in  consternation.  The  topsail  yard  and  mizzen  boom  were 
lighted  by  the  glare,  as  if  gas-lights  had  been  burning  di- 
rectly below  them;  and  until  just  before  daybreak,  at  four 
o'clock,  the  most  minute  objects  were  distinctly  visible."* 
The  other  assumption,  that  the  sun  could  not  possibly 
have  existed  without  giving  light  to  the  earth,  is  contra- 
dicted by  the  most  familiar  facts.  The  earth  and  each  of 
the  planets  might  have  been,  and  most  probably  were,  sur- 
rounded by  a  dense  atmosphere,  through  which  the  sun's 
rays  could  not  penetrate.  It  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  prove 
that  such  was  the  fact.  I  am  only  concerned  to  prove  the 
possibility ;  for  the  Infidel's  objection  is  founded  on  the 
presumed  impossibility  of  the  coexistence  of  a  dark  earth 


Somerville's  Connection  of  Physical  Sciences,  288. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  413 

and  a  shining  sun.  Any  person  wlio  has  ever  been  in 
Pittsburg,  Glasgow,  or  the  manufacturing  districts  of  En- 
gland, and  has  seen  how  the  smoke  of  even  a  hundred  fac- 
tory chimneys  will  shroud  the  heavens,  can  easily  compre- 
hend how  a  similar  discharge,  on  a  larger  scale,  from  the 
thousands  of  primeval  volcanoes,*  would  cover  the  earth 
with  the  pall  of  darkness.  By  the  eruption  of  a  single 
volcano,  in  the  island  of  Sumbawa,  in  1815,  the  air  was 
filled  with  ashes,  from  Java  to  Celebes,  darkening  an  area 
of  more  than  200,000  square  miles ;  and  the  darkness  was 
so  profound  in  Java,  three  hundred  miles  distant  from  the 
volcano,  that  nothing  equal  to  it  was  ever  witnessed  in  the 
darkest  night.f  Those  who  have  witnessed  the  fogs  raised 
on  the  Banks  of  Newfoundland,  in  the  Gulf  of  St.  Law- 
rence, and  in  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco,  by  the  mingling  of 
currents  of  water  of  slightly  different  temperatures,  can  be 
at  no  loss  to  conceive  the  density  of  the  vapors  produced 
by  the  boiling  of  the  sea  around  and  over  the  multitude  of 
volcanoes!  which  have  produced  the  countless  atolls  of  the 
Pacific,  and  by  the  vast  upheavals  of  thousands  of  miles  of 
heated  rocks  of  the  primary  formations  into  the  beds  of 
primeval  oceans.  While  such  processes  were  in  progress, 
it  was  impossible  but  that  darkness  should  be  upon  the  face 
of  the  deep.§  Even  now,  a  slight  change  of  atmospheric 
density  and  temperature  would  vail  the  earth  with  darkness. 
We  see  this  substantially  done  every  time  that  God  "  cover- 
eth  the  light  with  clouds,  and  commandeth  it  not  to  shine 
by  the  cloud  that  cometh  betwixt,"  although  the  sun  con- 
tinues to  shine  with  all  his  usual  splendor.  To  understand 
how  there  may  be  a  day  without  sunshine,  we  need  only 


*  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  250. 

t  Lyell's  Principles  of  Geology,  465. 

X  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  250. 

§  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  pp.  198,  216. 


414  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

conceive  the  whole  earth  temporarily  enveloped  in  the  va- 
pors ot  the  unastronomical  atmosphere  of  Peru,  thus  de- 
scribed by  Humboldt: 

'•A  thick  mist  obscures  the  firmament  in  this  region  for 
many  months,  during  the  period  called  tiempo  de  la  garua. 
Not  a  planet — not  the  most  brilliant  stars  of  the  southern 
hemisphere — are  visible.  It  is  frequently  almost  impossible 
to  distinguish  the  position  of  the  moon.  If,  by  chance,  the 
outline  of  the  sun's  disc  be  visible  during  the  day,  it  appears 
devoid  of  rays,  as  if  seen  through  colored  glasses.  Accord- 
ing to  what  modern  geology  has  taught  us  to  conjecture 
concerning  the  ancient  history  of  our  atmosphere,  its  prim- 
itive condition  in  respect  to  its  mixture  and  density  must 
have  been  unfavorable  to  the  transmission  of  light.  When 
we  consider  the  numerous  processes  which,  in  the  primary 
world,  may  have  led  to  the  separation  of  the  solids,  fluids, 
and  gases  around  the  earth's  surface,  the  thought  involunta- 
rily arises,  how  narrowly  the  human  race  escaped  being  sur- 
rounded with  an  untransparent  atmosphere,  which,  though 
not  greatly  prejudicial  to  some  classes  of  vegetation,  would 
yet  have  completely  vailed  the  whole  of  the  starry  canopy. 
All  knowledge  of  the  structure  of  the  universe  could  then 
have  been  withheld  from  the  inquiring  spirit  of  man."* 
The  sun,  then,  may  have  shone  with  all  his  brilliancy,  for 
thousands  of  years,  and  a  tingle  ray  never  have  penetrated 
the  darkness  upon  the  face  of  the  deep. 

But  we  will  go  further,  and  show  that  so  far  from  light 
being  an  essential  property  of  suns,  it  is  a  very  variable 
attribute,  and  that  in  several  cases  suns  have  ceased,  and 
others  begun,  to  shine,  before  our  eyes. 

The  fixed  stars  are  self-luminous  bodies,  similar  to  our 
sun,  only  immensely  distant  from  us.  Their  numbers,  mag- 
nitudes, and  places,  are  known  and  recorded.   But  new  stars 

*  Cosmos,  Vol.  III.  p.  139. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISEt  415 

have  frequently  flashed  into  view,  where  none  were  pre- 
viously seen  to  exist;  and  others  have  gradually  grown  dim 
and  disappeared,  without  changing  their  place ;  and  a  few 
which  had  disappeared  have  reappeared  in  the  same  spot  they 
formerly  occupied;  while  others  have  changed  their  color 
since  the  era  of  astronomical  observation.  In  short,  there 
is  no  permanence  in  the  heavens,  any  more  than  on  the 
earth;  but  a  perpetual  progress  and  change  is  the  destiny 
of  suns  and  stars,  of  which  the  most  conspicuous  indication 
is  the  variability  of  their  powers  of  giving  light,  of  which 
I  shall  transcribe  a  few  instances. 

"On  the  eleventh  of  November,  1572,  as  the  illu  trious 
Danish  astronomer,  Tycho,  was  walking  through  the  fields, 
he  was  astonished  to  observe  a  new  star  in  the  constellation 
Cassiopea,  beaming  with  a  radiance  quite  unwonted  in  that 
part  of  the  heavens.  Suspecting  some  delusion  about  his 
eyes,  he  went  to  a  group  of  peasants,  to  ascertain  if  they 
saw  it,  and  found  them  gazing  at  it  with  as  much  astonish- 
ment as  himself.  He  went  to  his  instrument,  and  fixed  its 
place,  from  which  it  never  after  appeared  to  deviate.  For 
some  time  it  increased  in  brightness — greatly  surpassed 
Sirius  in  luster,  and  even  Jupiter.  It  was  seen  by  good 
eyes  in  the  daytime;  a  thing  which  happens  only  to  Venus, 
under  very  favorable  circumstances;  and  at  night  it  pierced 
through  clouds  which  obscured  the  rest  of  the  stars.  After 
reaching  its  fullest  brightness,  it  again  diminished,  passed 
through  all  degrees  of  visible  magnitude,  assuming  i.i  suc- 
cession the  hues  of  a  dying  conflagration,  and  then  finally 
disappeared."  "It  is  impossible  to  imagine  anything  more 
tremendous  than  a  conflagration  that  could  be  visible  at 
such  a  distance."* 

Astronomers  now  recognize  a  class  of  such   Temporary 


*  NichoU's  Solar  System,  188.     Connection  of  Physical  Sciences, 
3C3. 


416  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

Stars,  which  have  appeared  from  time  to  time  in  different 
parts  of  the  heavens,  blazing  forth  with  extraordinary  lus- 
ter, and  after  remaining  awhile,  apparently  immovable,  have 
died  away,  and  left  no  trace.*  Twenty- one  of  such  appear- 
ances of  new  suns  are  on  record  f 

Still  further,  many  familiar  suns  have  ceased  to  shine. 
"  On  a  careful  re-examination  of  the  heavens,  maiij/  stars 
are  found  to  he  inissing.''X  "There  are  many  well  authen- 
ticated cases  of  the  disappearance  of  old  stars,  whose  places 
had  been  fixed  with  a  degree  of  certainty  not  to  be  doubted. 
In  October,  1781,  Sir  William  Herschel  observed  a  star, 
No.  55  in  Flamstead's  Catalogue,  in  the  constellation  Her- 
cules. In  1790  the  same  star  was  observed  by  the  same 
astronomer,  but  since  that  time  no  search  has  been  able  to 
detect  it.  The  stars  80  and  81  of  the  same  catalogue,  both 
of  the  fourth  magnitude,  have  likewise  disappeared.  In 
May,  1828,  Sir  John  Herschel  missed  the  star  No.  42,  in 
the  constellation  Virgo,  which  has  never  since  been  seen. 
Examples  might  be  multiplied,  but  it  is  unnecessary  "§ 

The  demonstration  of  the  variableness  of  the  light-giving 
power  of  suns  is  completed  by  the  phenomena  of  the  class 
called  Variable  Stars;  though  the  best  astronomers  are 
now  agreed  that  variahiUtij,  and  not  uniformity,  in  the 
emission  of  light,  is  the  general  character  of  the  stars. || 
But  the  variations  which  occur  before  our  eyes  impress  us 
more  deeply  than  those  which  require  centuries  for  their 
completion.  Sir  John  Herschel  has  observed,  and  graphic- 
ally described,  one  such  instance  of  variation  of  light. 

"  The  star  Eta  Argus  has  always  hitherto  been  regarded 
as  a  star  of  the  second  magnitude ;  and  I  never  had  reason 


'*  Herschel's  Outlines,  Sec.  827. 

t  Cosmos,  Vol.  VIII.  p.  210. 

X  Herschel's  Outlines,  Sec.  832. 

§  Mitchell's  Planetary  and  Stellar  Worlds,  294. 

U  Cosmos,  Vol.  III.  p.  253. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  417 

to  regard-  it  as  variable  In  November,  1837,  /  saw  it,  as 
usual.  Judge  of  my  surprise  to  find,  on  the  sixteenth  of 
December,  that  it  had  suddenly/  become  a  star  of  the  first 
magnitude,  and  almost  equal  to  Rigel  It  continued  to  in- 
crease. Rigel  is  now  not  to  be  compared  with  it.  It  ex- 
ceeds Arcturus,  and  is  very  near  equal  to  Alpha  Centauri, 
being,  at  the  moment  I  write,  the  fourth  star  in  the  heav- 
ens, in  the  order  of  brightness."*  It  has  since  passed 
through  several  variations  of  luster.  Humboldt  gives  a 
catalogue  of  twenty-four  of  such  stars,  whose  variations 
have  been  recorded. 

"A  strange  field  of  speculation  is  opened  by  this  phenom- 
enon. Here  we  have  a  star  fitfully  variable  to  an  astonish- 
ing extent,  and  whose  fluctuations  are  spread  over  centuries, 
apparently  in  no  settled  period,  and  with  no  regularity  of 
progression.  What  origin  can  we  ascribe  to  these  sudden 
flashes  and  relapses;'  What  conclusions  are  we  to  draw  as 
to  the  comfort  or  habitability  of  a  system  depending  for  its 
supply  of  light  and  heat  on  such  an  uncertain  source? 
Speculations  of  this  kind  can  hardly  be  termed  visionary, 
when  we  consider  that,  from  what  has  been  before  said,  we 
are  compelled  to  admit  a  community  of  nature  between  the 
fixed  stars  and  our  own  sun ;  and  when  we  reflect,  that  geol- 
ogy testifies  to  the  fact  of  extensive  changes  having  taken 
place,  at  epochs  of  the  most  remote  antiquity,  in  the  cli- 
mate and  temperature  of  our  globe ;  changes  diflScult  to  recon- 
cile with  the  operation  of  secondary  causes,  such  as  a  difi*er- 
ent  distribution  of  sea  and  land,  but  which  would  find  an 
easy  and  natural  explanation  in  a  slow  variation  of  the  sup- 
ply of  light  and  heat  aff'orded  by  the  sun  himself  "f  "I 
can  not  otherwise  understand  alterations  of  heat  and  cold 
so  extensive  as  at  one  period  to  have  clothed  high  northern 

»  Astronomical  Observations,  S51. 
t  Herschel's  Outlines,  Sec.  830. 
27 


418  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

latitudes  with  a  more  than  tropical  luxuriance  of  vegeta- 
tion, and  at  another  to  have  buried  vast  tracts  of  Europe, 
now  enjoying  a  genial  climate,  and  smiling  with  fertility, 
under  a  glacier  crust  of  enormous  thickness.  Such  changes 
seem  to  point  to  causes  more  powerful  than  the  mere  local 
distribution  of  land  and  water  can  well  be  supposed  to  have 
been.  In  the  slow  secular  variations  of  our  supply  of  light 
and  heat  i'rom  the  sun,  which,  in  the  immensity  of  time,  may 
have  gone  to  any  extent,  and  succeeded  each  other  in  any 
order,  without  violating  the  analogy  of  sidereal  phenomena 
which  we  know  to  have  taken  place,  we  have  a  cause,  not 
indeed  established  as  a  fact,  but  readily  admissible  as  some- 
thing beyond  a  bare  possibility,  fully  adequate  to  the  ut- 
most requirements  of  geology.  A  change  of  half  a  magni- 
tude on  the  luster  of  our  sun,  regarded  as  a  fixed  star, 
spread  over  successive  geological  epochs — now  progressive, 
now  receding,  now  stationary — is  what  no  astronomer  would 
now  hesitate  to  admit  as  a  perfectly  reasonable  and  not  im- 
probable  supposition.^ 

The  most  eminent  astronomers  are  perfectly  unanimous 
in  their  deductions  from  these  facts.  They  regard  variabil- 
ity as  the  general  characteristic  of  suns  and  stars,  our  own 
sun  not  excepted.  "We  are  led,"  says  Humboldt,  "by  anal- 
ogy to  infer,  that  as  the  fixed  stars  universally  have  not 
merely  an  apparent,  but  a  real  motion  of  their  own,  so  their 
surfaces  or  luminous  atmospheres  are  generally  subject  to 
those  changes  (in  their  "light  process")  which  recur,  in 
the  great  majority,  in  extremely  long,  and  therefore  un- 
measured, and  probably  undeterminable  periods,  or  which, 
in  a  few,  recur  without  being  periodical,  as  it  were,  by  a 
sudden  revolution,  either  for  a  longer  or  a  shorter  time." 
A-nd  he  asks,   Why  should  our  sun  differ  from  other  suns? 

In  reference  to  the  extinction  of  suns,  he  says :  "  What 


*  Astronomical  Observation."*,  351. 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  419 

we  no  longer  see  is  not  necessarily  annihilated.  It  is  merely 
the  transition  of  matter  into  new  forms — into  combinations 
which  are  subject  to  new  processes.  Dark  cosmical  bodies 
may,  by  a  renewed  process  of  light,  again  become  luminous."* 

In  confirmation  of  the  fact  adduced  in  support  of  this 
view,  by  La  Place,  "  that  those  stars  which  have  become  in- 
visible, after  having  surpassed  Jupiter  in  brilliancy,  have 
not  changed  their  place  during  the  time  they  continued 
visible,"  he  adds,  "  The  luminous  process  has  simply  ceased." 
Bessel  assertsf  that,  "N'o  reason  exists  for  considering  lu- 
minosity an  essential  property  of  these  bodies  "  And  Nicholl 
sums  up  the  matter  in  the  following  emphatic  words :  "  No 
more  is  light  inherent  in  the  sun  than  in  Tycho's  vanished 
star;  and  with  it  and  other  orbs,  a  time  may  come  when, 
through  the  consent  of  all  the  powers  of  nature,  he  shall 
cease  to  be  required  to  shine.  The  womb  which  contains 
the  future  is  that  which  bore  the  past."^ 

Here,  then  we  behold  astronomy  presenting  to  our  obser- 
vation facts  and  processes  so  similar  to  those  which  revela- 
tion presents  to  our  faith,  that  all  those  men  who  are  most 
profoundly  versed  in  her  lore,  reasoning  solely  from  the  facts 
of  science,  and  without  any  reference  to  the  Bible,  unani- 
mously conclude  that  there  was  such  a  state  of  darkness 
and  confusion  before  our  era,  as  the  Bible  declares  —  that  its 
causes  were  most  probably  such  as  the  Bible  implies — and 
that  the  sudden  illuminating  of  dark  bodies,  and  their  ex- 
tinction, and  even  re-illumination,  are  facts  so  perfectly  well 
authenticated  as  matters  of  observation  in  regard  to  other 
suns,  that  no  reasonable  man  can  hesitate  to  believe  any 
credible  assurance  that  our  sun  has  passed  through  such  a 
process.     With  what  feelings,  then,  are  we  to  regard  men 

*  Cosmos,  Vol.  III.  pp.  222-232. 
t  Cosmos,  Vol.  III.  p.  246. 
j     t  Solar  System,  190. 


420  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

who,  in  defiance  of  the  most  common  facts,  and  in  contra- 
diction to  the  demonstrations  of  science,  blaspheme  the 
God  of  truth  as  a  teacher  of  falsehood,  because  he  speaks 
of  light  distinct  from  that  of  the  sun?  Surely,  such  men 
are  those  whom  he  describes  as  "having  the  understanding 
darkened,  being  alienated  from  the  life  of  God,  through  the 
ignorance  that  is  in  them,  because  of  the  blindness  of  their 
hearts.  In  whom  the  God  of  this  world  hatli  blinded  the 
minds  of  them  that  believe  not."* 

These  facts,  of  the  sudden  kindling  of  stars,  their  grad- 
ual passage  through  all  the  hues  of  a  dying  conflagration, 
and  their  final  extinction,  and  present  blackness  of  dark- 
ness, are  facts  of  fearful  omen  to  the  enemies  of  God.  They 
are  the  original  threatenings  of  Heaven,  whence  the  fearful 
language  of  Bible  warning  is  derived.  They  attest  its 
truth,  and  illustrate  its  import. 

The  favorite  theory  of  the  unbeliever  is  the  uniformity  of 
nature.  "Where,"  says  he,  "is  the  promise  of  Christ's 
coming  to  judgment;  for  since  the  fathers  fell  asleep,  all 
things  continue  as  they  were  since  the  beginning  of  the 
world?"  But  the  telescope  dispels  the  illusion,  exhibits 
the  course  of  nature  as  a  succession  of  catastrophes,  dis- 
plays the  conflagration  of  other  worlds,  and  the  extinction 
of  their  suns,  before  our  eyes,  and  asks.  Why  should  our 
sun  differ  from  other  sunsf  It  is  not  the  preacher,  but  the 
philosopher,  who  has  turned  prophet,  when — looking  back 
on  the  period  when  the  Siberian  elephant  and  rhinoceros 
were  frozen  amid  their  native  jungle,  and  icebergs  visited 
the  plains  of  India — he  proclains,  "  The  womb  that  bore  tJie 
past  contains  the  future." 

The  threatenings  of  God's  Word  are  invested  with  a 
mantle  of  terrible  literality  by  the  facts  we  have  been  con- 
templating.    Raised   at  the  day  of  resurrection,  in  these 


*  Ephesians,  chap.  iv.  18.    2  Corinthians,  chap.  iv.  4, 


DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE.  421 

bodies,  and  with  these  senses,  and  this  capability  of  rejoic- 
ing in  the  light,  and  shuddering  and  pining  amid  outward 
gloom,  physical  darkness  will  be  the  terrible  prison  of  those 
who  chose  darkness  rather  than  light,  because  their  deeds 
were  evil.  The  Father  of  Lights  shall  withdraw  his  blessed 
influences  from  the  hearts,  the  dwellings,  the  eyes,  of  those 
who  say  to  him,  '' Depart  from  us,  for  we  desire  not  the 
knowledge  of  thy  ways."  The  sun  shall  cease  to  vivify 
God's  corn,  and  wine,  and  oil,  which  ungodly  men  consume 
upon  their  lusts.  The  moon  shall  cease  to  shine  upon  the 
robber's  toil,  and  the  stars  to  illumine  the  adulterer's  path. 
The  light  of  heaven  shall  cease  to  gild  the  field  of  carnage, 
where  men  perform  the  work  of  hell.  In  the  very  midst  of 
your  worldliness  and  business,  unbeliever,  when  you  are  in 
all  the  engrossment  of  buying  and  selling,  and  planting  and 
building,  and  marrying  and  giving  in  marriage,  without 
warning  or  expectation,  "the  sun  shall  go  down  at  noon,  and 
the  stars  shall  be  darkened  in  the  clear  day."  As  in  the 
warning  and  example  given  to  the  enemies  of  the  Lord  in 
Egypt,  thick  darkness,  that  may  be  felt,  shall  wind  its  in- 
evitable chains  around  you,  preventing  your  escape  from  the 
judgment  of  the  great  day,  and  giving  you  a  fearful  fore- 
taste of  that  "blackness  of  darkness  for  ever"  of  which 
you  are  now  forewarned  in  the  Word  of  Truth. 

"  The  sun  shall  be  darkened,  and  the  moon  shall  not  give 
her  light, 

"  And  the  stars  shall  fall  from  the  heavens, 

"  And  the  powers  of  the  heavens  shall  be  shaken ; 

"And  then  shall  appear  the  sign  of  the  Son  of  Man  in 
the  heavens, 

"And  then  shall  all  the  tribes  of  the  earth  mourn ; 

"  And  they  shall  see  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  the  clouds 
of  heaven, 

"With  power  and  great  glory." 

"  Cast  ye  the  unprofitable  servant  into  outer  darkness ; 


422  DAYLIGHT  BEFORE  SUNRISE. 

"There  shall  be  weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth." 

"  Hear  ye,  and  give  ear ;  be  not  proud, 

"  For  the  Lord  hath  spoken. 

"  Give  glory  to  the  Lord,  your  God, 

"  Before  he  cause  darkness, 

"  And  before  your  feet  stumble  upon  the  dark  mountains ; 

"  And  while  ye  look  for  light,  ^ 

"  He  turn  it  into  the  shadow  of  death, 

"And  make  it  gross  darkness." 

"I  am  the  light  of  the  world ; 

"  He  that  followeth  me  shall  not  walk  in  darkness, 

"But  shall  have  the  light  of  life."* 


*  Matthew,  chap.  xxiv.  29.  John,  chap.  viii.  12.  Jeremiah,  chap, 
xiii.  15.    Matthew,  chap.  xxii.  13  and  chap.  xxv.  30. 


CHAPTER    XII. 


Telescopic  Views  of   S 


No  kind  of  knowledge  is  more  useful  to  man  than  the 
knowledge  of  his  own  ignorance;  and  no  instrument  has 
done  more  to  give  him  such  knowledge  than  the  telescope. 
Faith  is  the  believing  of  facts  we  do  not  know,  upon  the 
word  of  one  who  does.  If  any  one  knows  everything,  or 
thinks  he  does,  he  can  have  no  faith.  A  deep  conviction  of 
our  own  ignorance  is,  therefore,  indispensable  to  faith.  The 
telescope  gives  us  this  conviction  in  two  ways.  It  shows  us 
that  we  see  a  great  many  things  we  do  not  perceive,  tells  us 
the  size  and  the  distances  of  those  little  sparks  that  adorn 
the  sky,  and  leads  us  to  reason  out  their  true  relations  to 
our  earth.  Then  it  tells  us,  that  what  we  see  is  little  of 
what  is  to  be  seen ;  that  our  knowledge  is  but  a  drop  from 
the  great  ocean,  a  rush-light  sparkling  in  the  vast  darkness 
of  the  unknown.  It  tells  us,  that  we  do  not  see  right,  and 
that  we  do  not  see  far ;  and  that  there  may  be  things,  both 
in  heaven  and  earth,  not  dreamed  of  in  our  philosophy. 
Further,  it  confirms  the  Bible  testimony  concerning  the 
farts  of  its  own  province,  by  removing  all  improbability 
from  some  of  its  most  wonderful  narratives,  attesting  the 
accuracy  of  its  language,  and  confirming,  by  some  of  its 
most  recent  discoveries  the  truth  of  its  statements.  Our 
space  will  only  allow  us  to  select  five  illustrations  of  the 
tendency  of  faith  in  the  telescope,  to  produce  faith  in  the 
Bible. 

1.  One  of  the  latest  astronomical  discoveries  throws  light 
(423) 


424  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

upon  one  of  the  most  ancient  scientific  allusions  of  the  Bi- 
ble, and  one  which  has  perplexed  both  commentators  and 
geologists  ;  that  which  hints  at  the  second  causes  of  the  del- 
uge. Not  that  it  is  at  all  needful  for  us  to  be  able  to  tell 
where  God  Almighty  procured  the  water  to  drown  the  un- 
godly sinners  of  the  old  world,  before  we  believe  his  word 
that  he  did  so;  unless,  indeed,  somebody  has  explored  the 
universe,  and  knows  that  there  is  not  water  enough  in  it  for 
that  purpose,  or  that  it  is  so  far  away  that  he  could  not  fetch 
it;  for.  as  to  the  fact  itself,  geology  assures  us  that  all  the 
dry  land  on  earth  has  been  drowned,  not  only  once,  but 
many  times.  It  is  not  the  province  of  the  commentator^ 
but  of  the  geologist,  to  account  for  the  phenomenon. 

Several  solutions  of  the  difiiculty  of  finding  water  enough 
for  the  purpose  have  been  proposed.  One  of  these  sup- 
poses that  some  of  the  internal  caverns  of  the  earth  are 
filled  with  water,  which,  when  heated  by  neighboring  vol- 
canic fires,  would  expand  one  twenty-third  of  its  bulk,  and 
flow  out,  and  raise  the  ocean.  When  the  volcanic  fire  was 
burnt  out,  and  the  water  cooled,  it  would  of  course  con- 
tract to  its  former  dimensions,  and  the  ocean  recede.  These 
caverns  they  suppose  to  be  meant  by  ''  the  fountains  of  the 
great  deep,"  in  Gene.<is  vii.  11. 

But  the  Bible  describes  another,  and  plainly  a  very  impor- 
tant source  of  the  waters  of  the  deluge,  in  the  rain  which  fell 
for  forty  days  and  forty  nights.  At  present,  all  the  water  in 
our  atmosphere  comes  from  the  sea,  by  evaporation ;  and  the 
quantity  is  too  insignificant  to  cover  the  globe  to  any  con- 
siderable depth.  Divines  and  philosophers  were  perplexed 
to  give  any  adequate  explanation  of  this  language,  and  con- 
sidered it  simply  as  Noah's  description  of  the  appearance  of 
things  as  viewed  from  the  ark,  rather  than  an  accurate  ex- 
planation of  the  actual  causes  of  the  deluge.  Now,  it  is 
certainly  true,  that  the  Bible  does  describe  things  as  they 
appear  to  men.     It  is,  however,  beginning  to  be  dificovered, 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  425 

that  these  popular  appearances  are  closely  connected  with 
philosophical  reality.  Our  purblind  astronomy  and  prat- 
tling geology  may  be  as  inadequate  to  expound  the  myste- 
ries of  the  Bible  philosophy  as  was  the  incoherent  science  of 
Strabo  and  Ptolemy.  The  experience  of  another  planet, 
now  transacting  before  our  eyes,  admonishes  us  not  to  limit 
the  resources  of  Omnipotence  by  our  narrow  experience,  or 
to  suppose  that  our  young  science  has  catalogued  all  the 
weapons  in  the  arsenal  of  the  Almighty. 

The  planet  Saturn  is  surrounded  by  a  revolving  belt,  con- 
sisting of  several  distinct  rings,  containing  an  area  a  hun- 
dred and  forty-six  times  greater  than  the  surface  of  our 
globe,  with  a  thickness  of  a  hundred  miles.  From  mechan- 
ical considerations  it  had  been  proved,  that  these  rings  could 
not  be  of  a  uniform  thickness  all  around,  else  when  a  major- 
ity of  his  seven  moons  were  on  the  same  side,  the  attraction 
would  draw  them  in  upon  him,  on  the  opposite  side;  and 
once  attracted  to  his  surface,  they  could  never  get  loose 
again,  if  they  were  solid.*  It  was  next  ascertained  that 
the  motions  of  the  moons  and  of  the  rings  were  such,  that 
if  the  inequality  was  always  in  the  same  place,  the  same  re- 
sult must  follow ;  so  that  the  ring  must  be  capable  of  chang- 
ing its  thickness,  according  to  circumstances.  It  must  be 
either  composed  of  an  immense  number  of  small  solid  bod- 
ies, capable  of  shifting  freely  about  among  themselves,  or 
else  be  fluid.  Finally,  it  has  been  demonstrated  that  this 
last  is  the  fact ;  that  the  density  of  this  celestial  ocean  is 
nearly  that  of  water ;  and  that  the  inner  portion,  at  least, 
is  so  transparent,  that  the  planet  has  been  seen  through  it.f 
"  The  ring  of  Saturn  is,  then,  a  stream  or  streams  of  fluid, 
rather  denser  than  water,  flowing  about  the  primary. "J  The 
extraordinary  fact,  which  shows  us  how  God  can  deluge  a 

*  Kendall's  Uranography,  268. 

t  Annual  of  Scientiflc  Discovery,  1856,  p.  380. 

X  Ibid.  1852,  p.  376. 


426  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

planet  when  he  pleases,  I  give  not  in  the  words  of  a  divine, 
but  of  a  philosopher,  whose  thoughtless  illustration  of 
Scripture  is  all  the  more  valuable,  that  it  is  evidently  un- 
intentional 

"  M  Otto  Struve,  Mr.  Bond,  and  Sir  David  Brewster,  are 
agreed  that  Saturn's  third  ring  is  fluid,  that  this  is  not  of 
very  recent  formation,  and  that  it  is  not  subject  to  rapid 
'3hange  And  they  have  come  to  the  extraordinary  conclu- 
sion, that  the  inner  border  of  the  ring  has,  since  the  day  of 
Huygens,  been  gradually  approaching  to  the  body  of  Saturn, 
and  that  we  may  expect,  sooner  or  later — perhaps  in  some 
dozen  years — to  see  the  rings  united  with  the  body  of  the 
planet.  With  this  deluge  Impending^  Saturn  would  scarcely 
he  a  very  eligible  residence  for  men,  whatever  it  might  he  for 
dolphins.' ^^ 

Knowing,  as  we  most  certainly  do,  that  the  fluid  envelopes 
af  our  own  planet  were  once  exceedingly  difierent  from  the 
>resent,t  here  is  a  possibility  quite  sufl&cient  to  stop  the 
nouth  of  the  scofifer.  Let  him  show  that  God  did  not,  or 
)rove  that  he  could  not,  suspend  a  similar  series  of  oceans 
)ver  the  earth,  or  cease  to  pronounce  a  universal  deluge  im- 
i)0S8ible. 

2.  That  sublime  ode,  in  which  Deborah  describes  the  stars 
'n  their  courses  as  fighting  against  Sisera  J  has  been  rescued 
r^om  the  grasp  of  modern  scoffers,  by  the  progress  of  as- 
tronomy. It  has  been  alleged  as  lending  its  support  to  the 
ielusions  of  judicial  astrology;  by  one  class  desiring  to 
lamage  the  Bible  as  a  teacher  of  superstition,  and  by  another 
.0  help  their  trade.  The  Bible  reader  will  doubtless  be 
•;reatly  surprised  to  hear  it  asserted,  that  the  Bible  lends 
ts  sanction  to  this  antiquated,  and,  as  he  thinks,  exploded 
luperstition.     He  'knows   how  expressly  the  Bible  forbids 


*  Ibid.  1856,  p.  377. 

t  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  pp.  198-216. 

X  Judges,  chap.  v. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  427 

God's  people  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it,  or  with  its 
heathenish  professors.  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  Learn  not 
the  way  of  the  heathen,  and  be  not  dismayed  at  the  signs 
of  heaven,  for  the  heathen  are  dismayed  at  them  "*  And 
they  will  be  still  more  surprised  to  learn,  that  those  who 
object  against  the  Bible,  that  it  ascribes  a  controlling  influ- 
ence to  the  stars,  are  firm  believers  in  Reichenbach's  dis- 
covery of  odyle;  an  influence  from  the  heavenly  bodies  so 
spiritual  and  powerful,  that  they  imagine  it  able  to  govern 
the  world,  instead  of  God  Almighty.f 

*  Jeremiah,  chap.  x. 

t  Some  of  my  readers  may  deem  any  notice  of  such  a  subject,  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  entirely  unnecessary;  but  having  lived  for 
some  years  within  sight  of  the  dwelling  of  a  woman  who  publicly 
advertised  herself  in  the  newspapers  as  a  professor  of  astrology,  and 
seen  the  continual  flow  of  troubled  minds  to  the  promised  light — 
the  humble  serving-girl  stealing  up  the  side  entrance,  and  the 
princely  chariot  discharging  its  willing  dupes  at  the  door,  and  roll- 
ing hastily  away,  to  await  them  at  the  corner — I  know  of  a  cer- 
tainty that  folly  is  not  yet  dead.  There  are  women,  aye,  and  men 
too,  who  are  above  the  folly  of  reading  the  Bible,  but  just  wise 
enough  to  pay  five  dollars  for,  and  spend  hours  in  the  study  of  an 
uncouth  astrological  picture,  representing  a  collocation  of  the  stars, 
which  was  never  witnessed  by  any  astronomer.  There  are  men 
who  would  not  give  way  to  the  superstition  of  supposing  that  their 
destiny  was  regulated  by  the  will  of  Almighty  God,  yet  who  be- 
lieve that  ever}'^  living  creature's  fate  is  regulated  by  the  aspect  of 
the  stars  at  the  hour  of  his  nativity;  the  same  stars  always  causing 
the  same  period  of  life  and  mode  of  death ;  though  every  day's  ex- 
perience testifies  the  contrary.  The  same  stars  presided  over  the 
birth  of  the  poor  soldier,  who  perished  in  an  instant  at  Austerlitz; 
of  his  imperial  master,  who  pined  for  years  in  St.  Helena;  of  the 
old  gentleman  who  died  in  his  own  bed,  of  gout;  and  of  the  batch 
of  puppies,  whereof  old  Towser  was  the  only  surviving  representa- 
tive, the  other  nine  having  found  their  fate  in  the  horse-pond,  in 
defiance  of  the  controlling  stars.  They  were  all  born  at  the  same 
hour,  and  under  the  same  auspices,  and  destined  to  the  same  fate, 
by  the  laws  of  astrology.  Yet  half  a  dozen  professors  of  astrology 
find  patrons  enough  in  each  of  our  great  cities  to  enable  them  to 
live  and  to  pay  for  advertising  in  the  daily  papers. 


428  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE. 

The  passage  thus  variously  abused  is  a  description,  in 
highly  poetic  strains,  of  the  battle  between  the  troops  of 
Israel  and  those  of  Sisera ;  of  the  defeat  of  the  latter,  and 
of  an  earthquake  and  tempest,  which  completed  the  de- 
struction of  his  exhausted  troops.  The  glory  of  the  victory 
is  wholly  ascribed  to  the  Lord  God  of  Israel ;  while  the 
rain,  the  thunder,  lightning,  swollen  river,  and  "  the  stars  in 
their  courses,"  are  all  described,  in  their  subordinate  places, 
as  only  his  instruments — the  weapons  of  his  arsenal. 

"  Lord,  when  thou  wentest  out  of  Seir, 

"  When  thou  marchedst  out  of  the  field  of  Edom, 

"  The  earth  trembled,  and  the  heavens  dopped, 

"  The  clouds  also  dropped  down  water ; 

"  The  mountains  also  melted  from  before  the  Lord, 

"  Even  that  Sinai,  from  before  the  Lord  God  of  Israel." 

Then,  after  describing  the  battle,  she  alludes  to  the  ce- 
lestial artillery,  and  to  the  effects  of  the  storm  in  swelling 
the  river,  and  sweeping  away  the  fugitives  who  had  sought 
the  fords : 

"  They  fought  from  heaven ; 

"  The  stars  in  their  courses  fought  against  Sisera ; 

"  The  river  Kishon  swept  them  away ; 

"  That  ancient  river,  the  river  Kishon."* 

After  describing  some  further  particulars,  the  hymn  con- 
cludes with  an  allusion  to  the  clearing  away  of  the  tempest 
and  the  appearance  of  the  unclouded  sun  over  the  field  of 
victory : 

"  So  let  all  thine  enemies  perish,  O  Lord ; 

"  But  let  them  that  love  thee  be  as  the  sun,  when  he 
goeth  forth  in  his  might." 

Where  is  there  the  least  allusion  here  to  any  controlling 
influence  of  the  stars?  You  might  just  as  well  say,  "  The 
Bible  ascribes  a  controlling  influence  over  the  destinies  of 


•  Judges,  chap.  v. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  429 

men,  to  tlie  river  Kishon ;  "  for  they  are  both  spoken  of,  in 
♦he  same  language,  as  instruments  in  God's  hand  for  the 
destruction  of  his  enemies. 

But  it  is  objected,  "  Even  by  this  explanation  you  have 
the  Bible  representing  the  stars  as  causing  the  rain."  Not 
so  fast.  If  a  man  were  very  ignorant,  and  had  never  heard 
of  anything  falling  from  the  sky  but  rain,  he  might  think 
so.  And  if  the  Bible  did  attribute  to  the  stars  some  such 
influence  over  the  vapors  of  the  atmosphere,  as  experience 
shows  the  moon  to  possess  over  the  ocean,  are  you  able  to 
demonstrate  its  absurdity  ? 

Deborah,  however,  when  she  sang  of  the  stars  in  their 
courses  fighting  against  Sisera,  was  describing  a  phenomenon 
very  diflerent  from  a  fall  of  rain — was,  in  fact,  describing  a 
fall  of  aerolites  upon  the  army  of  Sisera.  Multitudes  of 
stones  have  fallen  from  the  sky,  and  not  less  than  five  hun- 
dred such  falls  are  recorded. 

"On  September  1,  1814,  a  few  minutes  before  midday, 
while  the  sky  was  perfectly  serene,  a  violent  detonation  was 
heard  in  the  department  of  the  Lot  and  Garonne.  This  was 
followed  by  three  or  four  others,  and  finally  by  a  rolling 
noise,  at  first  resembling  a  discharge  of  musketry,  afterward 
the  rumbling  of  carriages,  and  lastly  that  of  a  large  build- 
ing falling  down.  Stones  were  immediately  after  precipi- 
tated to  the  ground,  some  of  which  weighed  eighteen 
pounds,  and  sunk  into  a  compact  soil,  to  the  depth  of  eight 
or  nine  inches ;  and  one  of  them  rebounded  three  or  four 
feet  from  the  ground." 

"A  great  shower  of  stones  fell  at  Barbatan,  near  Roque- 
fort, in  the  vicinity  of  Bordeaux,  on  July  24,  1790.  A 
mass  fifteen  inches  in  diameter  penetrated  a  hut  and  killed 
a  herdsman  and  bullock.  Some  of  the  stones  weighed 
twenty-five  pounds,  and  others  thirty  pounds." 

'^In  July,  1810,  a  large  ball  of  fire  fell  from  the  clouds, 


430  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

at  Shahabad,  which  burned  five  villages,  destroyed  the 
crops,  and  killed  several  men  and  women."* 

Astronomers  are  perfectly  agreed  as  to  the  character  of 
these  masses,  and  the  source  whence  they  come.  "It  ap- 
pears from  recent  astronomical  observations  that  the  sun 
numbers  among  his  attendants  not  only  planets,  asteroids, 
and  comets,  but  also  immense  multitudes  of  meteoric  stones, 
and  shooting  stars."t  -^rolites  are,  then,  really  stars. 
They  are  composed  of  materials  similar  to  those  of  our 
earth ;  the  only  other  star  whose  materials  we  can  compare 
with  them.  They  have  a  proper  motion  around  the  sun,  in 
orbits  distinct  from  that  of  the  earth.  They  are  capable  of 
emitting  the  most  brilliant  light,  in  favorable  circumstances. 
Some  of  them  are  as  large  as  the  asteroids.  One,  of  600,- 
000  tons  weight,  passed  within  twenty-five  miles  of  the 
earth,  at  the  rate  of  twenty  miles  a  second.  A  fragment  of 
it  reached  the  earth. J  "  That  aerolites  were  called  stars  by 
the  ancients  is  indisputable.  Indeed,  Anaxagoras  con- 
sidered the  stars  to  be  only  stony  masses,  torn  from  the 
earth  by  the  violence  of  rotation.  Democritus  tells  us,  that 
invisible  dark  masses  of  stone  move  with  the  visible  stars, 
and  remain  on  that  account  unknown,  but  sometimes  fall 
upon  the  earth,  and  are  extinguished,  as  happened  with  the 
stony  star  which  fell  near  Aegos  Potamos."§ 

When  Deborah,  therefore,  describes  the  stars  in  their 
courses  as  fighting  against  Sisera,  it  is  an  utterly  unfounded 
assumption  to  auppose  that  she  has  any  allusion  to  the  base- 
less fancies  of  an  astrology  everywhere  condemned  "by  the 
religion  she  professed,  when  a  simple  and  natural  explana- 

*  Dick's  Celestial  Scenery,  p.  67,  Applegate's  edition,  where  many 
such  instances  are  related. 

f  Vaughn's  Keport  to  the  American  Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science,  in  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery  for  1855,  p.  364. 

t  Soraerville's  Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences,  382. 

§  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  122;  Vol.  IV.  p.  569. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTITRE.  431 

tion  is  afforded  by  the  fact,  that  stars  do  fall  from  the  heav- 
ens to  the  earth,  and  that  they  do  so  in  their  courses,  and 
just  by  reason  of  their  orbital  motion;  and  that  the  ancients 
both  knew  the  fact,  and  gave  the  right  name  to  those  bod- 
ies. Let  no  reasonable  man  delude  himself  with  the  notion 
that  God  has  no  weapons  more  formidable  than  the  dotings 
of  astrology,  till  he  has  taken  a  view  of  the  arsenals  of 
God's  artillery,  which  he  has  treasured  up  against  the  day 
of  battle  and  of  war. 

Here  it  may  be  well  to  notice  the  illustration  which  the 
remarkable  showers  of  meteors,  particularly  those  of  Novem- 
ber, 1838,  shed  upon  several  much  ridiculed  texts  of  Scripture. 
Scientific  observation  has  fully  confirmed  and  illustrated  the 
scientific  accuracy  of  the  Bible  in  such  expressions  as,  "the 
stars  shall  fall  from  heaven;"  "there  fell  a  great  star  from 
heaven,  burning  as  it  were  a  lamp ; "  "  and  the  stars  of  heaven 
fell  unto  the  earth,  even  as  a  fig-tree  casteth  her  untimely  figs, 
when  she  is  shaken  of  a  mighty  wind."  Whatever  political  or 
ecclesiastical  events  these  symbols  may  signify,  there  can  be 
no  question,  now,  that  the  astronomical  phenomenon  used 
to  prefigure  them  is  correctly  described  in  the  Bible.  Most 
of  my  readers  have  seen  some  of  these  remarkable  exhibi- 
tions; but  for  the  sake  of  those  who  have  not,  I  give  a  brief 
account  of  one.  "By  much  the  most  splendid  meteoric 
shower  on  record,  began  at  nine  o'clock,  on  the  evening  of 
the  twelfth  of  November,  1833,  and  lasted  till  sunrise  next 
morning.  It  extended  from  Niagara,  and  the  northern 
lakes  of  America,  to  the  south  of  Jamaica,  and  from  61° 
of  longitude,  in  the  Atlantic,  to  100°  of  longitude  in  Cen- 
tral Mexico.  Shooting  stars  and  meteors  of  the  apparent 
size  of  Jupiter,  Venus,  and  even  the  full  moon,  darted  in 
myriads  toward  the  horizon,  as  if  every  star  in  the  heavens 
had  darted  from  their  spheres  "  They  are  described  as 
having  been  as  frequent  as  the  flakes  of  snow  in  a  snow-storm, 


432  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE. 

and  to  have  been  seen  with  equal  brilliancy  over  the  greater 
part  of  the  continent  of  North  America.* 

The  source  whence  these  meteors  proceed  is  distinctly 
ascertained "  to  be,  as  was  already  remarked  with  regard  to 
the  aerolites,  a  belt  of  small  planetoids,  revolving  around  the 
sun  in  a  little  less  than  a  year,  and  in  an  orbit  intersecting 
that  of  the  earth,  at  such  an  angle,  that  every  thirty-three 
years,  or  thereabouts,  the  earth  meets  the  full  tide  on  the 
twelfth  of  November.  These  meteors  are  true  and  proper 
stars.  "All  the  observations  made  during  the  year  1853 
agree  with  those  of  previous  years,  and  confirm  what  may 
be  regarded  as  sufficiently  well  established:  the  cosmical 
origin  of  shooting  stars. "f 

3.  The  language  of  the  Bible  with  respect  to  the  circuit 
of  the  sun  is  found  to  have  anticipated  one  of  the  most  sub- 
lime discoveries  of  modern  astronomy.  True  to  the  reality, 
as  well  as  to  the  appearance  of  things,  it  is  scientifically 
correct,  without  becoming  popularly  unintelligible. 

There  is  a  class  of  aspirants  to  gentility  who  refuse  to 
recognize  any  person  not  dressed  in  the  style  which  they 
suppose  to  be  fashionable  among  the  higher  classes.  A 
Glasgow  butcher's  wife,  in  the  Highlands,  attired  in  all  the 
magnificence  of  her  satins,  laces,  and  jewelry,  returned  the 
courteous  salute  of  the  little  woman  in  the  gingham  dress 
and  gray  shawl  with  a  contemptuous  toss  of  the  head,  and 
flounced  past,  to  learn,  to  her  great  mortification,  that  she 
had  missed  an  opportunity  of  forming  an  acquaintance  with 
the  Queen.  So  a  large  class  of  pretenders  to  science  refuse 
to  become  acquainted  with  Bible  truth,  because  it  is  not 
shrouded  in  the  technicalities  of  science,  but  displays  itself 
in  the  plain  speech  of  the  common  people  to  whom  it  was 
given.  They  will  have  it,  that  because  its  author  used  com- 
mon language,  it  was  because  he  could  not  aflFord  any  other ; 

*  Somerville's  Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences,  383. 
t  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1834,  p.  361. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  433 

and  as  he  did  not  contradict  every  vulgar  error  believed  by 
the  people  to  whom  he  spoke,  it  was  because  he  knew  no 
better;  and  because  the  Hebrews  knew  nothing  of  modern 
discoveries  in  astronomy,  geology,  and  the  other  sciences, 
and  the  Bible  does  not  contain  lectures  on  these  subjects, 
the  Grod  of  the  Hebrews  must  have  been  equally  ignorant, 
and  the  Bible  consequently  beneath  the  notice  of  a  philoso- 
pher. 

You  will  hear  such  persons  most  pertinaciously  assert, 
that  Moses  believed  all  the  absurdities  of  the  Ptolemaic 
astronomy;  that  the  earth  is  the  immovable  center,  around 
which  revolve  the  crystal  sphere  of  the  firmament,  and  the 
sun,  and  moon,  and  stars,  which  are  attached  to  it,  after  the 
manner  of  lamps  to  a  ceiling;  and  that  he,  and  the  world 
generally  in  his  day,  had  not  emerged  from  the  grossest  bar- 
barism and  ignorance  of  all  matters  of  natural  science.  Yet 
these  very  people  will  probably  tell  you,  in  the  same  conver- 
sation, of  the  wonderful  astronomical  observations  made  by 
the  Eiryptians,  ten  thousand  years  before  the  days  of  Adam! 
So  beautiful  is  the  consistency  of  Infidel  science.  But 
when  you  inquire  into  the  source  of  their  knowledge  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  ancients,  you  discover  that  they  did  not 
draw  it  from  the  writings  of  Moses,  of  which  they  betray 
the  grossest  ignorance,  nor  of  any  one  who  lived  within  a 
thousand  years  of  Moses'  time.  Voltaire  is  their  authority 
for  all  such  matters.  He  transferred  to  the  early  Asiatics 
all  the  absurdities  of  the  later  Greek  philosophers,  and 
would  have  us  believe  that  Moses,  who  wrote  before  these 
Greeks  had  learned  to  read,  was  indebted  to  them  for  his 
philosophy.  Of  the  learning  of  the  ancient  patriarchs 
Voltaire  does  not  tell  them  much,  for  a  satisfactory  reason. 

Yet  it  might  not  have  required  much  learning  to  infer, 

that  the  eyes,  and  ears,  and  nerves  of  men  who  lived  ten 

times  as  long  as  we  can,  must  have  been  more  perfect  than 

ours ;  that  a  man  who  could  observe  nature  with  such  eyes, 

28 


434  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

under  a  sky  where  Stoddart  now  sees  the  ring  of  Saturn, 
the  crescent  of  Venus,  and  the  moons  of  Jupiter,  with  the 
naked  eye,^  and  continue  his  observations  for  eight  hundred 
years,  would  certainly  acquire  a  better  knowledge  of  the 
appearance  of  things  than  any  number  of  generations  of 
short-lived  men,  called  away  by  death  before  they  have  well 
learned  how  to  observe,  and  able  only  to  leave  the  shell  of 
their  dis  ovcries  to  their  successors ;  that  unless  we  have 
some  good  reason  for  believing  that  the  mind  of  man  was 
greatly  inferior,  before  the  flood,  to  what  it  is  now,  the  an- 
tediluvians must  have  made  a  progress  in  the  knowledge  of 
the  physical  sciences,  during  the  three  thousand  years  which 
elapsed  from  the  creation  to  the  deluge,  much  greater  than 
the  nations  of  Europe  have  eifected  since  they  began  to 
learn  their  A,  B,  C,  about  the  same  number  of  years  ago ; 
and  that  tho^^gh  Noah  and  his  sons  might  not  have  preserved 
all  the  learning  of  their  drowned  contemporaries,  they  would 
still  have  enough  to  preserve  them  from  the  reproach  of  ig- 
norance and  barbarism;  at  least  until  their  sons  have  suc- 
ceeded in  building  a  larger  ship  than  the  ark,  or  a  monu- 
ment equal  to  the  Great  Pyramid.  The  Astronomer  Royal 
of  Siotlandl  has  demonstrated,  that  in  this  imperishable 
monument,  erected  four  thousand  years  ago,  the  builders, 
who  took  care  to  keep  it  alone,  of  all  the  buildings  of  Egypt, 
free  from  idolatrous  images  or  inscriptions,  recorded  with 
most  laborious  care,  in  multiples  of  the  earth's  polar  diam- 
eter, a  metric  system,  including  linear  and  liquid  measures, 
and  a  system  of  weights  based  on  a  cubical  measure  of 
water  of  uniform  temperature;  which  uniform  temperature 
they  took  the  utmost  care  to  preserve.     He  shows  further 


*  Letter  to  Herschel,  from  Oroomiah,  in  Persia — Annual  of 
Scientific  Di.-covery,  1854,  p.  367. 

t  Life  and  Work  in  the  Great  Pyramid^  by  Plazzi  Smyth,  F.  R.  S., 
LL.D. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  435 

that  they  were  acquainted  with  the  precession  of  the  equi- 
noxes, with  the  density  of  the  earth,  and  with  the  earth's 
distance  from  the  sun;  or  at  least  calculated  it  at  what 
proves  to  be  nearly  a  mean  of  our  discordant  calculations; 
and  that  they  were  acquainted  with  problems  just  beginning 
to  attract  the  attention  of  the  science  of  Europe. 

When  we  know  that  the  Chaldeans  taught  the  Egyptians 
the  expansive  power  of  steam,  and  the  induction  of  elec- 
tricity by  pointed  conductors;  that  from  the  most  remote 
antiquity  the  Chinese  were  acquainted  with  decimal  frac- 
tions, electro-magnetism,  the  mariner's  compass,  and  the 
art  of  making  glass;  that  lenses  have  been  found  in  the 
ruins  of  Nineveh,  and  that  an  artificial  currency  was  in  cir- 
culation in  the  first  cities  built  after  the  flood  ;^'f^  that  as- 
tronomical observations  were  made  in  China,  with  so  much 
accuracy,  from  the  deluge  till  the  days  of  Yau,  B.  C.  2357, 
that  the  necessary  intercalations  were  made  for  harmonizing 
the  solar  with  the  lunar  year,  and  fixing  the  true  period  of 
3G5|  days ;  and  that  similar  observations  were  conducted  to 
a  like  result  within  a  few  years  of  the  same  remote  period, 
in  Babylon ; — if  the  reader  does  not  conclude  that  the  world 
may  have  forgotten  as  much  ancient  lore  during  eighteen 
hundred  years  of  idolatrous  barbarism  before  the  coming  of 
Christ,  as  it  has  learned  in  the  same  number  since,  he  will, 
at  least,  satisfy  himself  that  the  ancient  patriarchs  were  not 
ignorant  savages. f     "Whole  nations,"  says  La  Place,  "have 

■:•:-  "These  tablets  (of  unbakel  clay,  with  inscriptions,  found  in 
the  tombs  of  E.-ech,  the  city  of  Ni:Tirod — Gene-is,  chap.  x.  10 — 
and  deciphered  by  Rawlinson)  were,  in  point  of  fact,  the  equivalent 
of  our  bank  no!.es,  and  prove  that  a  system  of  artificial  currency 
prevailed  in  Baby'ori  and  Persia  at  an  unpreccdentedly  ear'y  age; 
centuries  before  the  introduction  of  paper  and  writing. 

Rawlinson^  in  News  of  the  Churches,  Februari/,  1858,  p.  50. 

t  Wilkinson's  Manne-s  and  Customs  of  the  Egyptian  ,  Yo],  III. 
p.  lOG;  C.smo?,  Vo'.  I.  pp.  173,  182;  Chinese  llepository,  Vol.  IX. 
p.  573;  WilliaiW  Middle  Kingdom,  Vol.  II.  p.  147. 


436  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE. 

been  swept  from  the  earth,  with  their  languages,  arts,  and 
sciences,  leaving  but  confused  masses  of  ruins  to  mark  the 
place  where  mighty  cities  stood.  Their  history,  with  a  few 
doubtful  traditions,  has  perished ;  hut  the  perfection  of  their 
astronomical  observations  marks  their  high  antiquity^  fixes 
the  periods  of  their  existence^  and  proves  that  even  at  that 
early  time  they  must  have  Tnade  considerable  progress  in 
science.^'^  The  Infidel  theory,  that  the  first  men  were  sav- 
ages, is  a  pure  fiction,  refuted  by  every  known  fact  of  their 
history. 

That,  however,  is  not  the  matter  under  discussion.  We 
are  not  inquiring  now,  what  Moses  and  the  prophets  thought, 
but  what  the  Author  of  the  Bible  told  them  to  say.  The 
scribe  writes  as  his  employer  dictates  "  I  will  put  my 
words  in  thy  mouth,"  said  God  to  Jeremiah.  ''  My  tongue 
is  as  the  pen  of  a  ready  writer,"  said  David.  The  prophets 
began,  not  with  ''  Thus  saith  Isaiah,"  but  "  Thus  saith  the 
Lord."  Unless  the  Word  of  God  was  utterly  different  from 
all  his  other  works,  it  must  transcend  the  comprehension  of 
man  in  some  respects.  The  profoundest  philosopher  is  as 
ignorant  of  the  cause  of  the  vegetation  of  wheat  as  the 
mower  who  cuts  it  down ;  but  their  ignorance  of  the  mys- 
teries of  organic  force  is  no  reason  why  the  one  may  not 
harvest,  and  the  other  eat  and  live.  Just  so  God's  proph- 
ets conveyed  precious  mysteries  to  the  Church,  of  the  full 
import  of  which  they  themselves  were  ignorant;  even  as 
Daniel  heard  but  understood  not.  The  prophets,  to  whom 
it  was  revealed,  that  they  did  not  minister  to  themselves, 
but  to  us,  inquired  and  searched  diligently  into  the  meaning 
of  their  own  prophecies ;  which  meaning,  nevertheless,  con- 
tinued hid  for  ages  and  generations  f  If  the  prophets  of 
the  old  economy  might  be  ignorant  of  the  privileges  of  the 


*  Somorville's  Connection  of  Physical  Sciences,  82. 

f  Daniel,  chap.  xii.  8.     1  Pe'.er,  chap.  i.  10.     Ephesians,  chap.  i.  3. 


TELESCOnC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  437 

gospel  day,  of  which  they  prophesied,  at  God's  dictation, 
they  might  very  well  be  ignorant,  also,  of  the  philosophy  of 
creation,  and  yet  write  a  true  account  of  the  facts,  from  his 
mouth. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  the  ancient  Hebrews  and  their 
prophets  were,  if  not  quite  as  ignorant  of  natural  science 
as  modern  Infidels  are  pleased  to  represent  them,  yet  un- 
acquainted with  the  discoveries  of  Herschel  and  Newton ; 
and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  that  their  language  was 
the  adequate  medium  of  conveying  their  imperfect  ideas, 
containing  none  of  the  technicalities  invented  by  philoso- 
phers to  mark  modern  scientific  discoveries ;  and  that  God 
desired  to  convey  to  them  some  religious  instruction,  through 
the  medium  of  language;  must  we  suppose  it  indispens- 
able for  this  purpose  that  he  should  use  strange  words,  and 
scientific  phrases,  the  meaning  of  which  would  not  be  dis- 
covered for  thirty-three  hundred  years?  Could  not  Dr. 
Alexander  write  a  Sabbath-school  book  without  filling  it 
full  of  such  phrases  as  "right  ascension,"  "declination," 
"  precession  ef  the  equinoxes,"  "  radius  vector,"  and  the 
like  ?  Or,  if  some  wiseacre  did  prepare  such  a  book,  would 
it  be  very  useful  to  children  ?  Perhaps  even  we,  learned 
philosophers  of  the  nineteenth  century,  are  not  out  of 
school  yet.  How  many  discoveries  are  yet  to  be  made  in 
all  the  sciences;  discoveries  which  will  doubtless  render 
our  fancied  perfection  as  utterly  childish  to  the  philosophers 
of  a  thousand  years  hence  as  the  astronomy  of  the  Greeks 
seems  to  us ;  and  demand  the  use  of  technical  language, 
which  would  be  as  unintelligible  to  us  as  our  scientific  no- 
menclature would  have  been  to  Aristotle.  If  God  may  not 
use  popular  speech  in  speaking  to  the  people  of  any  given 
period,  but  must  needs  speak  the  technical  language  of  per- 
fect science,  and  if  science  is  now,  and  always  will  be,  of 
necessity,  imperfect,  we  are  led  to  the  sage  conclusion,  that 


438  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

every  revelation  from  God  to  man  must  always  be  unintel- 
ligible ! 

Does  it  necessarily  follow,  that  because  the  Author  of  the 
Bible  uses  the  common  plirases,  'sun  rising/'  and  ''sun 
setting,"  in  a  popular  treatise  upon  religion,  that  therefore 
he  was  ignorant  of  the  rotation  of  the  earth,  and  intended 
to  teach  that  the  sun  revolved  around  it?  He  is  certainly 
under  no  more  obligation  to  depart  from  the  common  lan- 
guage of  mankind,  and  introduce  the  technicalities  of  science 
into  such  a  discourse,  than  mankind  in  general,  and  our  ob- 
jectors in  particular,  are  to  do  the  like  in  their  common  con- 
versation. Now,  I  demand  to  know  whether  they  are  aware 
that  the  earth's  rotation  on  its  axis  is  the  cause  of  day  and 
night?  But  do  you  ever  hear  any  of  them  use  such  phrases 
as  "earth  rising,"  and  "earth  setting?"  But  if  an  Infidel's 
daily  use  of  the  phrases,  "sun  rising,^'  "sun  setting,"  and  the 
like,  does  not  prove,  either  that  he  is  ignorant  of  the  earth's 
rotation  as  the  cause  of  that  appearance,  or  that  he  intends 
to  deceive  the  world  by  those  plirases,  why  may  not  Al- 
mighty God  be  as  well  informed  and  as  honest  as  the  Infi- 
del, though  he  also  condescends  to  use  the  common  language 
of  mankind? 

Do  you  ever  hear  astronomers,  in  common  discourse,  use 
any  other  language?  I  suppose  Lieut.  Maury,  and  Her- 
schel,  and  Leverrier,  and  Mitchell,  know  a  little  of  the 
earth's  rotation;  but  they,  too,  use  the  English  tongue  very 
much  like  other  people,  and  speak  of  sunrise  and  sunset; 
yet  nobody  accuses  them  of  believing  in  the  Ptolemaic  as- 
tronomy. Hear  the  immortal  Kepler,  the  discoverer  of  the 
laws  of  planetary  revolution :  "  We  astronomers  do  not  pur- 
sue this  science  with  the  view  of  altering  common  language; 
but  we  wish  to  open  the  gates  of  truth,  without  afi'ecting 
the  vulgar  modes  of  speech.  We  say  with  the  common 
people, '  The  planets  stand  still,  or  go  down ; '  '  the  sun  rises, 
or  sets ;  *  meaning  only  that  so  the  thing  appears  to  us,  al- 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  439 

though  it  is  not  truly  so,  as  all  astronomers  are  agreed. 
How  much  less  should  we  require  that  the  Scriptures  of 
divine  inspiration,  setting  aside  the  common  modes  of  speech, 
should  shape  their  words  according  to  the  model  of  the 
natural  sciences,  and  by  employing  a  dark  and  inappropriate 
phraseology  about  things  which  surpass  the  comprehension 
of  those  whom  it  designs  to  instruct,  perplex  the  simple 
people  of  Grod,  and  thus  obstruct  its  own  way  toward  the 
attainment  of  the  far  more  exalted  end  to  which  it  aims." 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  God  not  only  may,  hut  must,  use 
popular  language  in  addressing  the  people,  in  a  work  not 
professedly  scientific ;  and  that  if  this  popular  language  be 
scientifically  incorrect,  such  use  of  it  neither  implies  his 
ignorance  nor  approval  of  the  error. 

But  it  may  be  worthy  of  inquiry  whether  this  popular 
language  of  mankind,  used  in  the  Bible,  be  scientifically 
erroneous.  If  the  language  be  intended  to  express  an  ab- 
solute reality,  no  doubt  it  is  erroneous  to  say  the  sun  rises 
and  sets;  but  if  it  be  only  intended  to  describe  an  appear- 
ance, and  the  words  themselves  declare  that  intention,  it 
can  not  be  shown  to  be  false  to  the  fact.  Now,  when  the 
matter  is  critically  investigated,  these  phrases  are  found  to 
be  far  more  accurate  than  those  of  "earth  rising,"  and 
"earth  setting,"  which  Infidels  say  the  Author  of  the  Bible 
should  have  used.  For,  as  up  and  down  have  no  existence 
in  nature,  save  with  reference  to  a  spectator,  and  as  the 
earth  is  always  down  with  respect  to  a  spectator  on  its  sur- 
face, neither  rising  toward  him,  nor  sinking  from  him,  in 
reality,  nor  appearing  to  do  so,  unless  in  an  earthquake, 
the  improved  phrases  are  false,  both  to  the  appearance  of 
things,  and  to  the  cause  of  it.  Whereas,  our  common 
speech,  making  no  pretensions  to  describe  the  causes  of  ap- 
pearances, can  not  contradict  any  scientific  discovery  of 
these  causes,  and  therefore  can  not  be  false  to  the  fact; 
while  it  truly  describes  all  that  it  pretends  to  describe — the 


440  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE. 

appearance  of  things  to  our  senses.  And  so,  after  all  the 
outcry  raised  against  it  by  sciolists,  the  vulgar  speech  of 
mankind,  used  by  the  Author  of  the  Bible,  must  be  allowed 
to  be  philosophical  enough  for  his  purpose,  and  theirs;  at 
least  till  somebody  favors  both,  with  a  better. 

Though  we  are  in  no  way  concerned,  then,  to  prove  that 
every  poetical  figure  in  Scripture,  and  every  popular  illus- 
tration taken  from  nature,  corresponds  to  the  accuracy  of 
scientific  investigation,  before  we  believe  the  Bible  to  be  a 
revelation  of  our  duty  to  God  and  man,  yet  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  inquire,  further,  whether  we  really  find  upon  its 
sacred  pages  such  crude  and  egregious  scientific  errors  as  In- 
fidels allege.  We  have  seen  in  the  last  chapter,  that  they  are 
not  able  to  read  even  its  first  chapter  without  blundering. 
Indeed,  they  generally  boast  of  their  ignorance  of  its  con- 
tents. It  is  a  very  good  rule  to  take  them  at  their  word, 
and  when  they  quote  Scripture,  to  take  it  for  granted  that 
they  quote  it  wrong ^  unless  you  know  the  contrary.  The 
first  thing  for  you  to  do  when  an  Infidel  tells  you  the  Bible 
says  so  and  so,  is  to  get  the  Book,  and  see  whether  it  does 
or  not.  You  will  generally  find  that  he  has  either  mis- 
quoted the  words,  or  mistaken  their  meaning,  from  a  neg- 
lect of  the  context;  or  perhaps  has  both  misquoted  and 
mistaken.  Then,  when  you  are  satisfied  of  the  correct 
meaning  of  the  text,  and  he  tells  you  that  it  is  contrary  to 
the  discoveries  of  science,  the  next  point  is  to  ask  him,  How 
do  you  know?  You  will  find  h*s  knowledge  of  science  and 
Scripture  about  equal.  Both  these  tests  should  be  applied 
to  scientific  objections  to  the  Bible,  as  they  are  all  composed 
of  equal  parts  of  biblical  blunders,  and  philosophical  fal- 
lacies. 

In  the  objection  under  consideration,  for  instance,  both 
statements  are  wrong.  The  Bible  does  not  represent  the 
earth  as  the  immovable  center  of  the  universe,  or  as  im- 
movable in  space  at  all.     It  does  not  represent  the  sun  and 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  411 

stars  as  revolving  around  it.  Nor  are  the  facts  of  astronomy 
more  correctly  stated.  It  is  not  the  Bible,  but  our  objec- 
tor, that  is  a  little  behind  the  age  in  his  knowledge  of 
science. 

If  we  inquire  for  those  texts  of  Scripture  which  repre- 
sent the  earth  as  the  immovable  center  of  the  universe,  we 
shall  be  referred  to  the  figurative  language  of  the  Psalms, 
the  book  of  Job,  and  other  poetical  parts  of  Scripture, 
which  speak  of  the  "foundations  of  the  earth,"  "the  earth 
being  established  "  "abiding  for  ever,"  and  the  like,  when 
the  slightest  attention  to  the  language  would  show  that  it 
is  intended  to  be  figurative.  The  accumulation  of  metaphors 
and  poetical  images  in  some  of  these  passages  is  beautiful 
and  grand  in  the  highest  degree;  but  none,  save  the  most 
stupid  reader,  would  ever  dream  of  interpreting  them  liter- 
ally. Take,  for  instance.  Psalm  civ.  1-6,  where,  in  one  line, 
the  world  is  described  as  God's  house,  with  beams,  and 
and  chambers,  and  foundations ;  but  in  the  very  next  line 
the  figure  is  changed,  and  it  is  viewed  as  an  infant,  covered 
with  the  deep,  as  with  a  garment. 

"  Bless,  the  Lord,  0  my  soul. 

"  O  Lord  my  God,  thou  art  very  great ; 

"  Thou  art  clothed  with  honor  and  majesty : 

"  Who  coverest  thyself  with  light,  as  with  a  garment ; 

"  Who  stretchest  out  the  heavens  like  a  curtain  ; 

"  Who  layeth  the  beams  of  his  chambers  upon  the  waters : 

"  Who  walketh  upon  the  wings  of  the  wind : 

"  Who  maketh  his  angels  spirits  : 

''  His  ministers  a  flaming  fire  : 

"  Who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  earthy 

"  That  it  should  not  be  removed  for  ever. 

"  Thou  coveredst  it  with  the  deep,  as  with  a  garment: 

"  The  waters  stood  above  the  mountains." 

But  if  any  one  is  so  gross  as  to  insist  on  the  literality  of 
such  a  passage,  and  to  allege  that  it  teaches  the  absolute 


442  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

immobility  of  the  earth,  let  him  tell  us  what  sort  of  im- 
mobility the  third  verse  teaches,  and  how  a  building  could 
be  stable,  the  beams  of  whose  chambers  are  laid  upon  the 
waters — the  chosen  emblems  of  instability.  "  He  hath 
founded  it  upon  the  seas  :  he  hath  established  it  upon  the 
floods,"  says  the  same  poet,  in  another  Psalm — xxiv  1. 
This,  and  all  other  expressions  quoted  as  declaring  the  im- 
mobility of  the  earth  in  space,  are  clearly  proved,  both  hy 
the  words  used,  and  the  sense  of  the  context,  to  refer  to 
an  entirely  different  idea :  namely,  its  duration  in  time, 
Thus,  Ecclesiastes  i.  4,  "  One  generation  passeth  away,  ant; 
another  cometh  ;  but  the  earth  abide th  forever,"  is  mani 
festly  contrasting  the  duration  of  earth  with  the  generation.- 
of  short-lived  men,  and  has  no  reference  to  motion  in  space 
at  all. 

Again,  in  Psalm  cxix.  89-91,  our  objectors  find  another 
Bible  declaration  of  the  immobility  of  the  earth  in  space : 

"  For  ever,  0  Lord,  thy  word  is  settled  in  heaven  ; 

"  Thy  faithfulness  is  unto  all  generations ; 

"  Thou  hast  established  the  earth,  and  it  abideth. 

"  Thei/  continue  to  this  day,  according  to  thine  ordinances." 

The  same  permanence  is  here  ascribed  to  the  heavens  (to 
which,  as  our  objectors  argue,  the  Bible  ascribes  a  perpetual 
revolution)  as  to  the  earth.  The  next  verse  explains  this 
permanence  to  be  continuance  to  this  day ;  durability,  not 
immobility.  That  the  word  establish  does  not  necessarily 
imply  fixture,  is  evident  from  its  application,  in  Proverbs 
viii.  28 :  "  He  established  the  clouds,"  the  most  fleeting  of 
all  things.  Nor  is  the  Hebrew  word  kun  (whence  our  En- 
glish word,  cunning),  inconsistent  with  motion ;  else,  the 
Psalmist  had  not  said  that  "  a  good  man's  footsteps  are  es- 
tablished  by  the  Lord."*  "He  established  my  goings." 
Wise  arrangement  is  the  idea,  not  permanent  fixture. 


Psalm  xl.  1,  and  xxxvii.  23,  margin. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  443 

The  same  remarks  apply  to  Psalm  xciii.  1  ;  xcvi.  10 ;  1 
Chronicles  xvi.  30,  and  many  other  similar  passages. 

"  The  world  is  established,  that  it  can  not  be  moved ; 

"  Thy  throne  is  established  of  old  : 

"  Thou  art  from  everlasting." 
Where  the  establishment,  which  is  contrasted  with  the  im- 
possible removal,  and  which  explains  its  import,  is  evidently 
not  a  local  fixing  of  some  material  seat,  in  one  place,  but 
the  everlasting  duration  of  God's  authority.  The  idea  is 
not  that  of  position  in  space,  at  all,  but  of  continued  dura- 
tion. 

Space  does  not  allow  us  to  quote  all  the  passages  which 
refer  to  this  subject;  but  after  an  examination  of  every 
passage  in  the  Bible  usually  referred  to  in  this  connection, 
and  of  a  multitude  of  others  bearing  upon  it,  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying,  that  it  does  not  contain  a  single  text 
which  asserts  or  implies  the  immobility  of  the  earth  in 
space.  The  notion  was  drawn  from  the  absurdities  of  the 
Greek  philosophy,  and  the  superstitions  of  popery,  but  was 
never  gathered  from  the  Word  of  God. 

But  it  is  alleged  that  other  passages  of  Scripture  do 
plainly  and  unequivocally  express  the  motion  of  the  sun, 
and  his  course  in  a  circuit ;  as,  for  instance,  the  Nineteenth 
Psalm : 

"  In  them  he  hath  set  a  tabernacle  for  the  sun, 

"  Which  is  as  a  bridegroom  coming  out  of  his  chamber, 

"  And  rejoiceth  as  a  strong  man  to  run  a  race. 

"  His  going  forth  is  from  the  end  of  heaven, 

"  And  his  circuit  unto  the  ends  of  it." 

And  again,  in  the  account  of  Joshua's  miracle,  in  the 
tenth  chapter  of  his  book,  it  is  quite  evident  that  the  writer 
supposed  the  sun  to  be  in  motion,  in  the  same  way  as  the 
moon,  for  he  commanded  them  both  to  stand  still :  "  Sun, 
stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou  moon  in  the  valley 
of  Ajalon.     And  the  sun  stood  still,  and  the  moon  stayed, 


444  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE. 

until  the  people  had  avenged  themselves  upon  their  ene- 
mies." Now,  it  is  said,  if  the  writer  had  known  what  he 
was  about,  he  would  have  known  that  the  sun  was  already 
standing  still,  and  would  have  told  the  earth  to  stop  its  ro- 
tation And  if  the  earth  had  obeyed  the  command,  we 
should  never  have  heard  of  the  miracle ;  for,  as  the  earth 
rotates  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand  miles  an  hour,  the  concus- 
sion produced  by  such  a  stoppage  would  have  projected 
Joshua,  and  Israelites,  and  Amorites,  beyond  the  moon,  to 
pursue  their  quarrel  among  the  fixed  stars. 

When  we  hear  men  of  some  respectability  bring  forward 
such  stuff,  we  are  constrained  to  wonder,  not  merely  were 
they  ever  at  school,  but  if  they  ever  traveled  in  a  railroad 
car,  or  whether  they  suppose  their  hearers  to  be  so  ignorant 
of  the  most  common  facts  as  to  believe  that  there  is  no  way 
of  bringing  a  carriage  to  a  stand  but  by  a  sudden  jerk,  or 
that  God  is  more  stupid  than  the  brakeman  of  an  express 
train.  We  will  do  them  the  justice,  however,  to  say,  that 
they  did  not  invent  it,  but  merely  shut  their  eyes,  and 
opened  their  mouths,  and  swallowed  it  for  philosophy,  be- 
cause they  found  it  in  the  writings  of  an  Infidel  scoffer,  and 
of  a  Neological  professor  of  theology* — an  edifying  exam- 
ple of  Infidel  credulity ! 

Let  it  be  noticed,  that  in  neither  of  these  texts,  nor  in 
any  other  portion  of  Scripture,  does  the  Bible  say  a  single 
word  about  the  revolution  of  the  sun  round  the  earth,  as  the 
common  center  of  the  universe ;  on  which,  however,  the 
whole  stress  of  the  objection  is  laid.  The  passages  do  not 
prove  what  they  are  adduced  to  prove  They  speak  of  the 
sun's  motion,  and  of  the  sun's  orbit,  hut  tliey  do  not  say  that 
the  earth  is  the  center  of  that  orhit.  These  texts,  then,  do 
not  prove  the  Author  of  the  Bible  ignorant  of  the  system 
of  the  universe. 


*  M.  Voltaire;  M.  Cheneviere;  Theol.  Essays,  Vol.  I.  p.  456. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  445 

The  objection  is  based  upon  utter  ignorance  of  one  of  the 
most  important  and  best  attested  discoveries  of  modern  as- 
tronomy; the  grand  motion  of  the  sun  and  solar  system 
through  the  regions  of  space,  and  the  dependence  of  the 
rotation  of  all  the  orbs  composing  it,  upon  that  motion.  It 
is  not  the  Author  of  the  Bible  who  is  ignorant  of  the  dis- 
coveries of  modern  astronomy — when  he  speaks  of  the  orbit 
of  the  sun,  and  his  race  from  one  end  of  the  heavens  to  the 
other,  and  of  the  need  of  a  miraculous  interposition  to  stop 
his  course  for  a  single  day — but  his  correctors,  who  have 
ventured  to  decry  the  statements  of  a  Book  which  com- 
mands the  respect  of  such  astronomers  as  Herschel  and 
Rosse,  while  ignorant  of  those  elements  of  astronomy  which 
they  might  have  learned  from  a  perusal  of  the  books  used 
by  their  children  in  our  common  schools.  For  the  benefit 
of  such,  however,  I  will  present  a  brief  explanation  of  the 
grounds  upon  which  astronomers  are  as  universally  agreed 
upon  the  belief  of  the  sun's  motion  around  a  center  of  the 
firmament,  as  they  are  upon  the  belief  of  the  revolution  of 
the  earth  round  the  sun 

When  you  are  passing  in  a  carriage,  at  night,  through  the 
street  of  a  city  lighted  up  by  gas-lamps  in  the  streets,  and 
lights  irregularly  dispersed  in  the  windows,  or  passing  in  a 
ferry-boat,  from  one  such  city  to  another,  at  a  short  dis- 
tance from  it,  you  observe  that  the  lights  which  you  are 
leaving  appear  to  draw  closer  and  closer  together,  while 
those  toward  which  you  are  approaching  widen  out,  and 
seem  to  separate  from  each  other.  If  the  night  were  per- 
fectly dark,  so  that  you  could  see  nothing  but  the  lights, 
you  could  certainly  know  not  only  that  you  were  in  motion, 
but  also  to  what  point  you  were  moving,  by  carefully  watch- 
ing their  appearances.  So,  if  all  the  fixed  stars  were  ab- 
solutely fixed,  and  the  sun  and  planets,  including  our  earth, 
were  moving  in  any  direction — say  to  the  north — then  the 
stars  toward  which  we  were  moving  would  seem  to  widen 


446  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

out  from  each  other,  and  those  which  we  were  leaving  would 
seem  to  close  up ;  so  that  the  space  which  appeared  between 
any  two  stars  in  the  south,  in  a  correct  map  of  the  heav- 
ens, a  hundred  years  ago,  would  be  smaller,  and  that  be- 
tween any  two  stars  in  the  north  would  be  larger,  than  the 
spate  between  the  same  stars  upon  a  correct  map  now.  Now, 
such  changes  in  the  apparent  positions  of  stars  are  actually 
observed.  The  stars  do  not  appear  in  the  same  places 
now  as  they  did  a  hundred  years  ago. 

The  fixed  star.?,  then,  are  either  drifting  past  our  solar 
system,  which  alone  remains  fixed ;  or,  the  fixed  stars  are 
all  actually  at  rest,  and  our  sun  is  drifting  through  them ; 
or,  our  solar  system  and  the  so-called  fixed  stars  are  both 
in  motion.  One  or  other  of  these  suppositions  must  be  the 
fact.  The  first  is  simply  the  old  Ptolemaic  absurdity,  only 
transferring  the  center  of  the  universe  to  the  sun.  The 
second  is  contrary  to  the  observed  fact,  that  multitudes  of 
the  stars,  which  were  supposed  to  be  fixed,  are  actually  re- 
volving around  each  other,  in  systems  of  double,  triple,  and 
multiple  suns.  And  both  are  contrary  to  the  first  princi- 
ples of  gravitation;  for,  as  every  particle  of  matter  attracts 
every  other,  directly  as  the  mass,  and  inversely  as  the  square 
of  the  distance,  if  any  one  particle  of  matter  in  the  universe 
is  in  motion,  the  square  of  its  distance  from  every  other 
particle  varies,  and  its  attraction  is  increased  in  one  direc- 
tion, and  diminished  in  another;  and  so  every  particle  of 
matter  in  free  space,  as  far  as  the  force  of  gravitation  ex- 
tends, will  be  put  in  motion  too.  But  our  earth,  and  the 
planets,  and  the  double  and  triple  stars,  are  in  motion,  and 
the  law  of  gravitation  extends  to  every  known  part  of  the 
universe;  therefore  every  known  particle  of  matter  in  the 
universe  is  in  motion  too,  our  sun  included. 

The  third  supposition,  then,  is  most  indisputably  true; 
our  solar  system,  and  all  the  heavenly  bodies,  are  in  motion. 
To  this  conclusion  all  the  observed  facts  conform.     The  Bi- 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  447 

ble  does  say  that  the  sun  moves,  and  moves  in  a  curve  All 
mathematicians  prove  that  it  must  of  necessity  do  so.  All 
astronomers  assert  that  it  does  so.  The  unanimous  verdict 
of  the  scientific  world  is  thus  rendered  by  Nicholl :  "^s  to 
the  subject  itself,  the  grand  motion  of  the  sun,  as  well  as  its 
present  direction,  must  he  received  now  as  an  established  doc- 
trine of  astronomy y^^  But  the  discovery  was  anticipated, 
three  thousand  years  ago,  by  the  Author  of  the  Bible. 

But,  as  will  readily  be  perceived,  the  difficulty  of  deter- 
mining either  the  direction  or  the  rate  of  this  motion  is 
immensely  increase  1  in  this  case ;  for  we  are  now  not  like 
persons  riding  in  a  carriage,  watching  the  fixed  lights  in  the 
street  to  determine  our  direction  and  rate  of  progress;  but 
we  are  watching  the  lamps  of  a  multitude  of  carriages, 
moving  at  various  distances,  and  with  various  velocities,  and, 
for  anything  we  can  tell  at  first  sight,  in  various  directions. 
We  are  on  board  a  steamer,  and  are  watching  the  lights  of 
a  multitude  of  other  steamers,  also  in  motion ;  and  it  is  not 
easy  to  find  out,  in  the  darkness,  how  either  they  or  we  are 
going.  If  each  were  pursuing  its  own  independent  course, 
without  any  common  object  or  destination,  the  confusion 
would  be  so  great  that  we  could  learn  nothing  of  the  rate 
or  direction  either  of  our  own  motion  or  theirs. 

But  astronomers  are  not  content  to  believe  that  the  uni- 
verse is  governed  by  accident.  The  whole  science  is  based 
upon  the  assumption,  that  a  presiding  mind  has  impressed 
the  stamp  of  order  and  regularity  upon  the  whole  cosmos. 
They  are  deeply  convinced  that  God's  law  extends  to  all 
God's  creation;  that  all  his  works  display  his  intelligence, 
as  well  as  his  power,  and  proceed  according  to  a  wise  plan. 
Having  seen  that  all  the  stellar  motions  previously  known 
are  orderly  motions,  in  circular  or  elliptical  orbits,  and  that 


*  Humboldt's  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  139;  Hcrschers  Outlines,  380; 
Kendall's  Uranography,  205. 


448  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

the  most  of  tlie  solid  bodies  belonging  to  our  own  system 
revolve  in  one  direction,  they  reasoned  from  analogy,  that 
this  might  be  the  case  with  the  sun  and  the  fixed  stars,  and 
went  to  work  with  great  diligence,  to  see  whether  it  was  or 
not;  and,  by  comparing  a  great  multitude  of  observations, 
ancient  and  modern,  made  both  in  the  northern  and  south- 
ern hemisplieres,  and  on  all  sorts  of  stars,  they  have  come 
to  the  conclusion,  that  our  sun,  and  all  the  bodies  of  the 
solar  system,  are  flying  northward,  at  the  rate  of  three  mil- 
lions three  hundred  and  thirty-six  thousand  geographical 
miles  a  day — five  thousand  times  faster  than  a  railway  ex- 
press train — toward  the  constellation  Hercules,  in  R.  A. 
259°  Dec.  35°. 

Further,  as  the  direction  of  this  motion  is  slowly  and 
regularly  changing,  just  as  the  direction  of  the  head  of  a 
steamer  in  wearing,  or  of  a  railway  train  running  a  curve,  it 
is  certain  that  the  sun  is  moving,  not  in  a  straight  line,  but 
in  a  curve.  The  revolution  of  the  sun  in  such  an  orbit  was 
known  to  the  Author  of  the  Bible  when  he  wrote,  "  his  cir- 
cuit is  to  the  end  of  heaven."  The  direction  of  the  cir- 
cumference of  a  circle  being  known,  that  of  its  center  can 
be  found  ;  for  the  radius  is  always  a  tangent  to  the  circum- 
ference, and  the  intersection  of  two  of  these  radii  will  be 
the  center;  so  that,  if  we  certainly  knew  the  sun's  orbit  to 
be  circular,  or  nearly  so,  we  could  calculate  the  center.  But 
as  we  do  not  certainly  know  its  form,  we  can  not  certainly 
calculate  the  center ;  we  can  only  come  near  it.  And  as 
we  know  that  the  line  which  connects  the  circumference 
with  the  center  of  the  sun's  orbit,  runs  through  the  group 
of  stars  known  as  the  Pleiades,  or  the  Cluster;  and  as  ;:11 
the  stars  along  that  line  seem  to  move  in  the  same  direction 
— a  difiierent  direction  from  that  of  the  stars  in  other  re- 
gions, just  as  they  must  do  if  they  and  we  were  revolving 
around  that  group — Argelander  and  others  have  concluded, 
with  a  high  degree  of  probability,  that  the  grand  center 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  449 

around  wticli  the  sun  and  our  firmament  revolve,  is  that 
constellation  which  the  Author  of  the  Bible,  more  than 
three  thousand  years  ago,  called  kyme — the  pivot. 

It  would  require  a  greater  knowledge  of  electro-magnet- 
ism than  most  of  my  readers  possess,  to  explain  the  con- 
nection of  the  earth's  rotation  with  the  sun's  grand  move- 
ment. I  will  merely  state  the  facts.  Electro-magnetism 
is  induced  by  friction.  The  regions  of  space  are  not  empty, 
but  filled  with  an  ether,  whose  undulations  produce  light ; 
and  this  ether  is  sufficiently  dense  to  retard  the  motions  of 
comets.  The  friction,  produced  by  the  rapid  passage  of  the 
sun  and  solar  system  through  this  ether,  must  be  immense, 
and  is  one  source  of  electricity,  and  the  principal  source  of 
electro  magnetism.  This  kind  of  electricity  difi'ers  from 
the  other  kinds,  in  that  its  action  is  always  at  right  angles 
to  the  current,  and  tends  to  produce  rotation  in  any  wheel, 
cylinder,  or  sphere,  along  whose  axis  it  Jlows.^  The  sun, 
and  all  the  planets,  traveling  in  the  direction  of  their  poles, 
the  current  is  of  course  in  the  direction  of  the  axis ;  and 
the  result  is,  that  while  the  sun  moves  along  his  grand 
course,  he  and  all  the  bodies  of  the  system  will  rotate,  by 
the  influence  of  the  electro-magnetism  generated  by  that 
motion ;  and  if  he  stops,  his  and  their  rotation  stops  too. 
Day  and  night  on  earth  are  produced  by  the  sun's  motion 
causing  the  earth's  rotation.  You  can  see  the  principle 
illustrated  by  the  child  who  runs  along  the  street  with  his 
windmill,  to  create  a  current,  which  will  make  it  revolve. 
The  Author  of  the  Bible  made  no  mistake  when,  desiring 
to  lengthen  the  day,  he  commanded  the  sun  to  stand  still. 
It  is  not  the  Creator,  but  his  correctors,  who  are  ignorant 
of  the  mechanism  of  the  universe. 

Thus,  these  long-misunderstood  and  much-assailed  Scrip- 

*  Somerville's  Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciencee,  171,  337, 
315;  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  286. 
29 


450  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

tures  are  not  only  vindicated,  but  far  more  than  vindicated, 
by  the  progress  of  astronomical  discovery.  It  not  only 
proves  the  language  of  the  Bible  to  be  correct;  it  assures 
us  that  it  is  divine.  The  same  Hand  which  formed  the 
stars  to  guide  the  simple  peasant  to  his  dwelling,  at  the 
close  of  day,  and  to  lead  the  mighty  intellects  of  Newton 
and  of  Herschel  among  the  mysteries  of  the  universe, 
formed  those  expressions  which,  to  the  peasant's  eye,  de- 
scribe the  apparent  reality,  and,  to  the  astronomer's  reason, 
demonstrate  the  reality  of  the  appearance  of  the  heavens, 
and  are  thus,  alike  to  peasant  and  philosopher,  the  oracles 
of  God. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  instance  of  such  Bible  oracles.  Thou- 
sands of  years  before  philosophers  knew  anything  of  the 
formation  of  dew,  Moses  described  it  exactly,  and  noticed 
how  it  differed  from  the  rain  which  drops  down,  while  the 
dew  evaporates.  "My  doctrine  shall  drop  as  the  rain,  my 
speech  shall  distill  as  the  dew." — Deuteronomy  xxxii.  2. 
Solomon  described  the  cycloidal  course  of  the  wind,  and 
recorded  it  in  Ecclesiastes  long  before  Admiral  Fitzroy's 
discovery;  as  he  also  anticipated  the  doctrine  of  aqueous 
circulation  in  his  pregnant  proverb:  "Unto  the  place 
from  whence  the  rivers  come,  thither  they  return  again." — 
Ecclesiastes  i.  7.  Job  declared  the  law  of  pneumatics  when 
he  declared  that  "God  maketh  weight  for  the  winds."  Long 
before  Madler,  the  celebrated  Russian  astronomer,  published 
his  remarkable  opinion:  "  I  regard  the  Pleiades  as  the  cen- 
tral group  to  the  whole  astral  system,  and  the  fixed  stars, 
even  to  it?  outer  limits,  marked  by  the  Milky  Way;  and  I 
regard  Alcyone  as  that  star  of  all  others,  composing  the 
group  which  is  favored  by  most  of  the  probabilities  as  being 
the  true  central  sun  of  the  universe,"  Moses  tells  us  they 
were  known  as  "the  hinge,  or  pivot,"  of  the  heavens;  and 
God  asks,  "Canst  thou  bind  the  secret  influences  of  the 
Pleiades?"     Though  Peter  was  no  geologist,  and  probably 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  451 

incapable  of  calculating  the  ratio  of  the  central  heat,  he 
tells  us  that  the  heavens  and  the  earth  are  "  reserved  unto 
fire,"  literally,  "stored  with  fire." 

Equally  in  advance  of  modern  medical  science,  thousands 
of  years  before  our  modern  discoveries,  the  Author  of  the 
Bible  declared  that  "the  life  is  in  the  blood,"  and  spoke  of 
the  slow  combustion  of  starvation  exactly  in  the  language 
of  the  most  recent  physiology,  "  they  shall  be  hurnt  with 
hunger,  and  devoured  with  burning  heat." — Deuteronomy 
xxxii.  24. 

Here  we  have  scientific  truth  not  discovered  for  centuries 
by  our  men  of  science,  but  revealed  by  prophets — scientific 
discovery,  in  advance  of  science — predictions  of  the  future 
progress  of  the  human  intellect,  no  less  than  revelations  of 
the  existing  motions  of  the  stars.  He  who  wrote  these 
oracles  knew  that  the  creatures  to  whom  he  gave  them 
would  one  day  unfold  their  hidden  meaning  (else  he  had  not 
so  written  them),  and  in  the  light  of  scientific  discovery, 
see  them  to  be  as  truly  divine  predictions  of  the  advance  of 
science,  as  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel,  read 
among  the  ruins  of  Thebes  or  Babylon,  are  seen  to  be  pre- 
dictions of  the  ruin  of  empires.  Man's  discoveries  fade 
into  insignificance  in  the  presence  of  such  unfolding  mys- 
teries ;  and  we  are  led  to  our  Bibles,  with  the  prayer,  "  Open 
mine  eyes,  that  I  may  behold  wondrous  things  out  of  thy 
law." 

4.  The  ancient  charter  of  the  Church  was  written  in  the 
language  of  one  of  the  most  recent  astronomical  discover- 
ies, thirty-six  hundred  years  before  Herschel  and  Rosse  en- 
abled us  to  understand  its  full  significance:  "He  brought 
him  forth  abroad,  and  said  unto  him,  Look  now  toward  heaven, 
and  tell  the  stars,  if  thou  be  able  to  number  them :  and 
he  said  unto  him,  So  shall  thy  seed  6e."* 

*  Genesis,  chap.  xv.  5. 


452  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

The  scenery  was  well  calculated  to  impress  Abraham's 
mind  with  a  sense  of  the  ability  of  Christ  to  fulfill  a  very 
glorious  promise,  by  a  very  improbable  event;  but  the 
illustration  was  as  well  calculated  as  the  promise  to  test  the 
character  of  that  faith  which  takes  God's  Word  as  suflBcient 
evidence  of  things  not  seen ;  for,  if  the  promise  was  a  try- 
ing test  of  faith,  so  was  the  illustration.  Before  this,  God 
had  promised  that  his  seed  should  be  as  the  dust  of  the 
earth ;  and  afterward  he  declared  it  should  be  as  the  sand 
of  the  seashore;  the  well-known  symbol  of  a  multitude 
beyond  all  power  of  calculation.  To  couple  the  stars  of 
heaven  with  the  sand  upon  the  seashore  in  any  such  con- 
nection as  to  imply  that  the  stars  too  were  innumerable,  or 
that  their  number  came  within  any  degree  of  comparison 
with  the  ocean  sands,  must  have  seemed  to  Abraham  in  the 
highest  degree  mysterious,  even  as  it  has  appeared  to  scof- 
fers, in  modern  times,  utterly  ridiculous ;  for,  though  the 
first  glance  at  the  sky  conveys  the  impression  that  the  stars 
are  really  innumerable,  the  investigations  of  our  imperfect 
astronomy  seem  to  assure  us  that  this  is  by  no  means  the 
case.  And,  as  the  patriarch  sat,  night  after  night,  at  his 
tent  door,  and,  in  obedience  to  the  command  of  Christ, 
counted  the  stars,  and  made  such  a  catalogue  of  them  as  his 
Chaldean  preceptors  had  used,  he  would  very  speedily  come 
to  the  conclusion,  that  so  far  as  he  could  see,  they  were  by 
no  means  innumerable ;  for  the  catalogue  of  Hipparchus 
reckons  only  one  thousand  and  twenty-two  as  visible  to  one 
observer,  and  the  whole  number  visible  in  both  hemispheres 
by  the  naked  eye  does  not  exceed  eight  thousand.*  And 
even  if  we  suppose,  that  these  old  patriarchs  had  better 
eyes,  as  we  know  they  had  a  clearer  sky,  than  modern  west- 
ern observers,  and  that  Abraham  saw  the  moons  of  Jupiter, 
and  stars  as  small,  still  the  number  would  not  seem  in  the 


*  Cosmos  1. 140. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  453 

least  degree  comparable  with  the  number  of  the  sands  upon 
the  seashore — whereof  a  million  are  contained  in  a  cubic 
inch,*  a  number  greater  than  the  population  of  the  globe 
in  a  square  foot,f  while  the  sum  total  of  the  human  race, 
from  Adam  to  this  hour,  would  not  approach  to  the  aggre- 
gate of  the  sands  of  a  single  mile.  Though  the  stars  of  a 
size  too  small  to  be  visible  to  our  eyes,  are  much  more  nu- 
merous than  the  larger  stars,  yet  even  up  to  the  range  of 
view  possessed  by  ordinary  telescopes,  they  are  by  no  means 
innumerable.  In  fact,  they  are  counted  and  registered,  and 
the  number  of  the  stars  of  the  ninth  magnitude,  which  are 
four  times  as  distant  as  the  most  distant  visible  to  our  eyes 
— so  distant  that  their  light  is  five  hundred  and  eighty-six 
years  in  traveling  toward  us — is  declared  to  be  exactly 
thirty-seven  thousand  seven  hundred  and  thirty-nine. 
Abraham's  sense  and  Abraham's  faith  must  have  had  many  a 
conflict  on  this  promise,  as  the  faith  and  the  sense  of  many 
of  his  children,  especially  the  scientific  portion  of  them, 
have  since,  when  reading  such  portions  as  this ;  and  those 
other  Scriptures  which  represent  it  as  an  achievement  of 
Omniscience,  that  "  he  telleth  the  number  of  the  stars ;  he 
calleth  them  all  by  their  names."!  It  is  indeed  remarkable 
how  God  delights  to  test  the  faith  of  his  people,  and  to 
stumble  the  pride  of  fools,  by  presenting  this  mysterious 
truth,  of  the  innumerable  multitude  of  the  stars,  in  every 
announcement  ,of  the  wonderful  works  of  Him  who  is  per- 
fect in  wisdom.  Infant  astronomy  stretched  out  her  hands 
to  catch  the  stars,  and  count  them.  Many  a  proud  Infidel 
wondered  that  Moses  could  be  so  silly  as  to  suppose  he 
could  not  count  the  stars,  and  the  believer  often  wondered 


♦  Ehrenberg  computes  that  there  are  forty-one  millions  of  tho 
shells  of  animalculse  in  a  cubic  inch  of  Bilier  Slate, 
t  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1860,  p.  341. 
X  Psalm  cxlvii.  4. 


454  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE. 

what  these  words  could  mean.  But  faith  rests  in  the  per- 
suasion of  two  great  truths:  "God  is  very  wise,"  and  "I 
am  very  ignorant." 

The  increase  of  knowledge,  by  widening  the  boundaries 
of  our  ignorance,  seemed  for  a  time  to  render  the  difficulty 
even  greater.  The  increased  power  of  Herschel's  tele- 
scope, and  his  discovery  of  the  constitution  of  the  Milky 
Way,  mark  an  era  in  the  progress  of  astronomy,  and  enlarge 
our  views  of  the  extent  of  the  universe,  to  an  extent  in- 
conceivable by  those  who  have  nx)t  studied  the  science. 
Where  we  see  only  a  faint  whitish  cloud  stretching  across 
the  sky,  Herschel's  telescope  disclosed  a  vast  bed  of  stars. 
At  one  time  he  counted  five  hundred  and  eighty-eight  stars 
in  the  field  of  his  telescope.  In  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  one 
hundred  and  sixteen  thousand  passed  before  his  eye.  In 
another  portion,  he  found  three  hundred  and  thirty -one 
thousand  stars  in  a  single  cluster.*  He  found  the  whole 
structure  of  that  vast  luminous  cloud  which  spans  the  sky, 
"  to  consist  entirely  of  stars,  scattered  hy  millions,  like  glit- 
tering dust,  on  the  background  of  the  general  heavens." 

Yet  still  it  was  not  supposed  to  be  at  all  impossible  to 
estimate  their  numbers.  Even  this  distinguished  astrono- 
mer, a  few  years  ago,  computed  it  at  eight  or  ten  millions. 
Schroeter  allowed  twenty  degrees  of  it  to  pass  before  him, 
and  withdrew  from  the  majestic  spactacle,  exclaiming, 
"What  Omnipotence!"  He  calculated,  however,  that  the 
number  of  the  stars  visible  through  one  of  the  best  tele- 
scopes in  Europe,  in  1840,  was  twelve  millions;  a  number 
equaled  by  a  single  generation  of  Abraham's  descendants, 
f{\T  below  the  power  of  computation,  and  utterly  insignifi- 
cant, as  compared  with  the  sands  of  the  sea. 

Had  our  powers  of  observation  stopped  here,  the  great 
promise  must  still  have  seemed  as  mysterious  to  the  astron- 


*  Dick's  Sidereal  Heavens,  59;  Herschel's  Outlines. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  455 

omer,  as  it  once  seemed  to  the  Patriarch.  But  if  either 
the  Father  of  the  Faithful,  or  the  Father  of  Sidereal  As- 
tronomy, had  deluded  himself  with  the  notion,  that  he  fully 
comprehended  either  the  words  or  the  works  of  Him  who  is 
wonderful  in  counsel,  and  excellent  in  working,  and  argued 
thence  that,  because  the  revealed  words  and  the  visible 
works  seemed  not  to  correspond,  they  were  really  contra- 
dictory, he  would  have  committed  the  blunder  of  modern 
Infidels,  who  assume  that  they  know  everything,  and  that 
as  God's  knowledge  can  not  be  any  greater  than  theirs, 
every  Scripture  which  their  science  can  not  comprehend 
must  be  erroneous.  The  grandest  truths,  imperfectly  per- 
ceived in  the  twilight  of  incipient  science,  serve  as  stum- 
bling-blocks for  conceited  speculators,  as  well  as  landmarks 
on  the  boundaries  of  knowledge  to  true  philosophers,  who 
will  ever  imbibe  the  spirit  of  Newton's  celebrated  saying: 
"I  seem  to  myself  like  a  child  gathering  pebbles  on  the 
shore,  while  the  great  ocean  of  knowledge  lies  unexplored 
before  me;"  or  the  profound  remark  of  Humboldt:  "What 
is  seen  does  not  exhaust  that  which  is  perceptible." 

But  the  progress  of  science  was  not  destined  merely  to 
coast  the  shore  of  this  ocean.  In  1845,  Lord  Rosse,  and  a 
band  of  accomplished  astronomers,  commenced  a  voyage 
through  the  immensities,  with  a  telescope  which  has  en- 
larged our  view  of  the  visible  universe  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty -five  million  times  the  extent  before  perceived,  and 
displayed  far  more  accurately  the  real  form  and  nature  of 
objects  previously  seen.  Herschel's  researches  into  the 
Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  which  have  justly  rendered 
his  name  immortal  as  the  science  he  illustrated,  had  revealed 
th<?  existence  of  great  numbers  of  nehulce — clouds  of  light 
— faint,  yet  distinct.  He  supposed  many  of  these  to  con- 
sist of  a  luminous  fluid,  pretty  near  to  us ;  at  least,  com- 
paratively so ;  for  to  believe  that  they  were  stars,  so  far 
away  as  to  be  severally  invisible  in  his  forty  feet  telescope, 


456  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

while  yet  several  of  these  clouds  are  distinctly  seen  by  the 
naked  eye,  involved  the  belief  of  distances  so  astounding, 
and  of  multitudes  so  incredible,  and  of  a  degree  of  close- 
ness of  the  several  stars  so  unparalleled  by  anything  which 
even  he  had  observed,  that  his  imagination  and  reason 
failed  to  meet  the  requirements  of  such  a  problem.  The 
supposition  was,  however,  thrown  out  bj  this  gigantic  in- 
tellect, that  these  clouds  might  be  firmaments ;  that  the 
Bible  word  heavens  might  be  literally  plural ;  and  more  than 
that,  he  labored  in  the  accumulation  of  facts  which  tended 
to  confirm  it.  He  disclosed  the  fact,  that  several  of  these 
apparent  clouds,  which,  to  very  excellent  telescopes,  dis- 
played only  a  larger  surface  of  cloudy  matter,  did,  in  the 
reflector  of  his  largest  telescope,  display  themselves  in  their 
true  character,  as  globular  clusters,  consisting  of  innumer- 
able multitudes  of  glorious  stars ;  and,  moreover,  that, 
stretching  away  far  beyond  star,  or  Milky  Way,  or  nebulae, 
he  had  seen,  in  some  parts  of  the  heavens,  "  a  stippling,"  or 
uniform  dotting  of  the  field  of  view,  by  points  of  light  too 
small  to  admit  of  any  one  being  steadily  or  fixedly  exam- 
ined, and  too  numerous  for  counting^  were  it  possible  so  to 
view  them !  What  are  these  ?  Millions  upon  millions  of 
years  must  have  elapsed  ere  that  faint  light  could  reach  our 
globe,  from  those  profundities  of  space,  though  it  travels 
like  the  lightning's  flash.  If  they  are  stars,  the  sands  of 
the  seashore  are  as  inferior  in  numbers  as  the  surface  of 
earth  is  inferior  in  dimensions  to  the  arch  of  heaven.  But 
if  these  faint  dots  and  stipplings  are  not  single  stars!— if 
they  are  star-clouds — galaxies — firmaments,  like  our  Milky 
Way — our  infinity  is  multiplied  by  millions  upon  millions  ! 
Imagination  pants,  reason  grows  dizzy,  arithmetic  fails  to 
fathom,  and  human  eyes  fear  to  look  into  the  abyss.  No 
wonder  that  this  profound  astronomer,  when  a  glimpse  of 
infinity  flashed  on  his  eye,  retired  from  the  telescope, 
trembling  in  every  nerve,  afraid  to  behold. 


TJlLESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE.  457 

And  yet  this  astounding  supposition  is  a  literal  truth ; 
and  the  light  of  those  suns,  whose  twilight  thus  bowed  down 
that  mighty  intellect  in  reverent  adoration,  now  shines  be- 
fore human  eyes  in  all  its  noonday  refulgence.  One  of  the 
most  remarkable  of  these  nebulae — one  which  is  visible  to  a 
good  eye  in  the  belt  of  Orion — has  been  disclosed  to  the 
observers  at  Parsontown  as  a  firmament ;  and  minute  points, 
scarce  perceptible  to  common  telescopes,  blaze  forth  as 
magnificent  clusters  of  glorious  stars,  so  close  and  crowded, 
that  no  figure  can  adequately  describe  them,  save  the  twin 
symbol  of  the  promise,  "  the  sand  by  the  seashore,"  or  "  the 
dust  of  the  earth."  "  There  is  a  minute  point,  near  Polaris," 
says  Nicholl,  "  so  minute,  that  it  requires  a  good  telescope 
to  discern  its  being,  I  have  seen  it  as  represented  by  a 
good  mirror,  blazing  like  a  star  of  the  first  magnitude ;  and 
though  examined  by  a  potent  microscope,  clear  and  definite 
as  the  distinctest  of  these  our  nearest  orbs,  when  beheld 
through  an  atmosphere  not  disturbed.  Nay,  through  distances 
of  an  order  I  shall  scarcely  name,  I  have  seen  a  mass  of  orbs 
compressed  and  brilliant,  so  that  each  touched  on  each  other, 
like  the  separate  grains  of  a  handful  of  sand,  and  yet  there 
seemed  no  melting  or  fusion  of  any  one  of  the  points  into 
the  surrounding  mass.  Each  sparkled  individually  its  light 
pure  and  apart,  like  that  of  any  constituent  of  the  cluster 
of  the  Pleiades."* 

"  The  larger  and  nearer  masses  are  seen  with  sufiicient 
distinctness  to  reveal  the  grand  fact  decisive  of  their  char- 
acter, viz :  that  they  consist  of  multitudes  of  closely  related 
orbs,  forming  an  independent  system.  In  other  cases  we 
find  the  individual  stars  by  no  means  so  clearly  defined. 
Through  effect,  in  all  probability,  of  distance,  the  intervals 
between  them  appear  much  less,  the  shining  points  them- 
selves being  also  fainter;  while  the  masses  still  further  off 


*  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  62. 


458  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

may  he  best  likened  to  a  handful  of  golden  sand,  or,  as  it  is 
aptly  termed,  star  dust;  beyond  which  no  stars,  or  any  ves- 
tige of  them,  are  seen,  but  only  a  patch  or  streak  of  milky 
light,  similar  to  the  unresolved  portions  of  our  surrounding 
zcne  "^ 

To  say,  then,  that  the  stars  of  the  sky  are  actually  innu- 
merable is  only  a  cold  statement  of  the  plainest  fact.  Hear 
it  in  the  lanr^uage  of  one  privileged  to  behold  the  glories  of 
one  out  of  the  thousands  of  similar  firmaments:  "The 
mottled  region  forming  the  lighter  part  of  the  mass  (the 
nebula  in  Orion)  is  a  very  blaze  of  stars.  But  that  stellar 
creation,  now  that  we  are  freed  from  all  dubiety  concerning 
the  significaace  of  those  hazes  that  float  numberless  in 
space,  how  glorious,  how  endless!  Behold,  amid  that  limit- 
less ocean,  every  speck,  however  remote  or  dim,  a  noble 
galaxy.  Lustrous  they  are,  too ;  in  manifold  instances  be- 
yond all  neighboring  reality — beyond  the  loftiest  dream 
which  ever  exercised  the  imagination.  The  great  cluster  in 
Hercules  has  long  dazzled  the  heart  with  its  splendors,  but 
we  have  learned  now  that  among  circular  and  compact  gal- 
axies, a  class  to  which  the  nebulous  stars  belong,  there  are 
multitudes  ^Yhich  infinitely  surpass  it — nay,  that  schemes  of 
being  ri  e  above  it,  sun  becoming  nearer  to  sun,  until  their 
skies  must  be  one  blaze  of  light — a  throng  of  burning  ac- 
tivities! But,  far  aloft  stands  Orion,  the  pre-eminent  glory 
and  wonder  of  the  starry  universe!  Judged  by  the  only 
criti  ism  yet  applicable,  it  is  perhaps  so  remote  that  its 
light  does  not  reach  us  in  less  than  fifty  or  sixty  thousand 
years;  and  as  at  the  same  time  it  occupies  so  large  an  ap- 
parent portion  of  the  heavens,  how  stupendous  must  be  the 


*  Arcbitcclure  of  the  Heavens,  64.  These  unre?olved  milky 
streaks  and  patches  have  since  been  discovered  to  bo  true  nebulae, 
or  phosplio  \c  clouds,  in  some  way  connected  wilh  their  adjacent 
star>. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  459 

extent  of  the  nebula.  It  would  seem  almost  as  if  all  the 
other  clusters  hitherto  gauged  were  collected  and  compressed 
into  one,  they  would  not  surpass  this  mighty  group,  in 
which  every  wisp — every  lorinkle — is  a  sand-heap  of  stars. 
There  are  cases  in  which,  though  imagination  has  quailed, 
reason  may  still  adventure  inquiry,  and  prolong  its  specula- 
tions; but  at  times  we  are  brought  to  a  limit  across  which 
no  human  faculty  has  the  strength  to  penetrate,  and  where, 
as  now,  at  the  very  footstool  of  the  secret  Throne,  we  can 
only  bend  our  heads,  and  silently  adore.  And  from  the  in- 
ner Adyta — the  invisible  shrine  of  what  alone  is  and  en- 
dures—a voice  is  heard: 

''  Hast  thou  an  arm  like  God? 

''Canst  thou  thunder  with  a  voice  like  Him? 

"  Canst  thou  bind  the  sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades, 

"Or  loosen  the  bands  of  Orion? 

"Canst  thou  bring  forth  Mazzaroth  in  his  seasons? 

"Canst  thou  guide  Arcturus  and  his  sons?* 

"He  telleth  the  number  of  the  stars: 

"  He  calleth  them  all  by  their  names. 

"Great  is  our  Lord,  and  of  great  power; 

"  His  understanding  is  infinite  "f 
Thus,  nobly  does  science  vindicate  Scripture,  and  display 
the  wisdom  and  power  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  whose  king- 
dom extends  through  all  space,  and  endures  through  all 
duration.  He  who  called  these  countless  hosts  of  glorious 
orbs  into  being  is  abundantly  able  to  multiply,  to  an  equally 
incalculable  number,  the  humble  sands  which  line  the 
oceans  of  terrestrial  grace,  the  brilliant  stars  which  shall 
yet  adorn  the  heavens  of  celestial  glory.  All,  of  every  na- 
tion, who  shall  partake  of  Abraham's  faith,  are  Abraham's 
children.     They  are  Christ's,  and  so  Abraham's  seed,  and 


*  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  144. 

t  Job,  chap,  xxxvili.  31.     Psalm  cxlvii.  4. 


460  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

heirs,  according  to  this  promise.*  When  the  great  multi- 
tude, which  no  man  can  number,  out  of  every  nation,  and 
tongue,  and  people,  stand  before  the  throne  of  God,  and 
cause  the  many  mansions  of  our  Father's  house  to  re-echo 
the  shout,  "Salvation  to  our  God  which  sitteth  on  the 
throne,  and  to  the  Lamb,"  the  answering  hallelujahs  of  the 
most  distant  orbs  shall  expound  the  purport  of  that  solemn 
oath  to  Abraham  and  Abraham's  seed :  "  By  myself  have  I 
sworn,  saith  the  Lord,  for  because  thou  hast  done  this  thing, 
and  hast  not  withheld  thy  son,  thine  only  son,  that  in  bless- 
ing I  will  bless  thee,  and  in  multiplying  I  will  multiply  thy 
seed  as  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  as  the  sand  which  is  upon 
the  seashore.^ '-f 

5.  It  is  not  probable  that  the  mysteries  of  the  dit^tant 
heavens,  or  of  those  future  glories  of  the  redeemed  which  the 
Bible  employs  them  to  symbolize,  will  ever  be  fully  explored 
by  man,  or  adequately  apprehended  in  the  present  state  of 
being  But  it  is  most  certain  that  God  would  not  have 
employed  the  mysteries  of  astronomy  so  frequently  as  the 
symbols  of  the  mysteries  of  the  glory  to  be  revealed,  had 
there  not  been  some  correspondence  between  the  things 
which  eye  hath  not  seen,  and  these  patterns  shown  in  the 
mount.  So  habitual,  indeed,  is  the  Scripture  use  of  these 
visible  heavens  as  the  types  of  all  that  is  exalted,  pure, 
cheering,  and  glorious,  that,  to  most  Christians,  the  word 
has  lost  its  primary  meaning,  and  the  idea  first  suggested  to 
their  minds  by  the  word  heaven  is  that  of  future  glory ;  yet 
their  views  of  the  locality  and  physical  adornments  of  the 
many  mansions  of  their  Father's  house  are  dim  and  shad- 
owy, just  because  they  do  not  acquaint  themselves  suffi- 
ciently with  the  divine  descriptions  in  the  Bible,  and  the 
divine  illustrations  in  the  sky.     The  Bible  would  be  better 

*  Genesis,  chap.  xxii.  16. 

t  Galatians,  chap.  iii.  14,  29.    Gen.  xxii.  16,  17. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  461 

understood  were  the  heavens  better  explored.  "  I  go,"  said 
Jesus,  "  to  prepare  a  place  for  you."  The  bodies  of  the 
saints,  raised  on  the  resurrection  morn,  will  need  a  place  on 
which  to  stand.  The  body  of  the  Lord,  which  his  disciples 
handled,  and  "  saw  that  a  spirit  had  not  flesh  and  bones,  as 
they  saw  him  have,"  is  now  resident  in  a  place.  Where  He 
is,  there  shall  his  people  be  also.  Why,  then,  when  the 
Bible  employs  all  that  is  beauteous  in  earth,  and  glorious  in 
heaven,  to  describe  the  adornments  of  the  palace  of  the 
King  of  kings,  should  we  hesitate  to  believe  that  the  power 
and  wisdom  of  God  are  not  exhausted  in  this  little  earth  of 
ours,  but  that  other  worlds  may  as  far  transcend  ours  in 
glory,  as  many  of  them  do  in  magnitude  ? — or,  to  allow  that 
the  glorious  visions  of  Ezekiel  and  John  were  not  views  of 
nonentities,  or  mere  visions  of  clouds,  or  of  some  incom- 
prehensible symbols  of  more  incomprehensible  spiritualities, 
but  actual  views  of  the  existing  glories  of  some  portion  of 
the  universe,  presented  to  us  as  vividly  as  the  dullness  of 
our  minds  and  the  earthliness  of  our  speech  will  permit  ?  It 
is  certain  that  the  recent  progress  of  astronomical  discovery 
has  revealed  celestial  scenery  which  illustrates  some  of  the 
most  mysterious  of  these  visions. 

It  has  long  been  known,  that  "  one  star  differeth  from  an- 
other star  in  glory,"  and  that  the  orbs  of  heaven  shine  with 
various  colors.  Sirius  is  white,  Arcturus  red,  and  Procyon 
yellow.  The  telescope  shows  all  the  smaller  stars  in  various 
colors.  Under  the  clear  skies  of  Syria  their  brilliance  is 
vastly  greater  than  in  our  climate.  "  One  star  shines  like  a 
rubi/,  atwther  as  an  emerald,  and  the  whole  heavens  sparkle 
as  with  various  gems  "*  But  the  discovery  of  the  double 
and  triple  stars  has  added  a  new  harmony  of  colors  to  these 
coronets  of  celestial  jewels.  These  stars  generally  display 
the  complementary  colors.     If  the  one  star  displays  a  color 


♦  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  217. 


462  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

from  the  red  end  of  the  Spectrum,  the  other  is  generally  of 
the  corresponding  shade,  from  the  violet  end.  For  instance, 
in  0^  Cygni,  the  large  star  is  yellow,  arid  the  two  smaller 
stars  are  blue ;  and  so  in  others,  through  all  the  colors  of 
the  rainbow.  "It  may  be  easier  suggested  in  words,"  says 
Sir  John  Ilerschel,  "than  conceived  in  imagination,  what  a 
variety  of  illumination  two  stars — a  red  and  a  green,  or  a 
yellow  and  a  blue  one —must  afford  a  planet  circulating 
around  either,  and  what  cheering  contrasts  and  grateful 
vicissitudes  a  red  and  a  green  day,  for  instance,  alternating 
with  a  white  one,  and  with  darkness,  must  arise  from  the 
presence  or  absence  of  one,  or  other,  or  both,  from  the 
horizon."*  But  suppose  one  of  the  globular  clusters — for 
instance,  that  in  the  constellation  Hercules — thus  consti- 
tuted ;  its  unnumbered  thousands  of  suns,  wheeling  round 
central  worlds,  and  exhibiting  their  glories  to  their  inhabi- 
tants ;  "  skies  blazing,  with  grand  orbs  scattered  regularly 
around,  and  with  a  profusion  to  which  our  darker  heavens 
are  strangers ; "  the  overhead  sky,  seen  from  the  interior 
regions  of  the  cluster,  must  appear  gorgeous  heyond  descrip- 
tion. In  the  strictest  literality  it  might  be  said  to  the 
dwellers  in  such  a  cluster,  "  Thy  sun  shall  no  more  go 
down,  neither  shall  thy  moon  withdraw  herself."  The  sur- 
rounding walls  of  such  a  celestial  palace  must  seem  indeed 
"garnished  with  all  manner  of  precious  stones."  Sapphire, 
emerald,  sardius,  chrysolite,  and  pearl,  must  seem  but  dim 
mirrors  of  its  glorious  refulgence.  Under  its  ever  rising 
suns  the  gates  need  not  be  shut  at  all  by  day,  "  for  there 
shall  be  no  night  there."  That  glorious  place  now  exists, 
though  far  away. 

But  the  Lord  of  these  hosts  has  said,  "  Behold,  I  come 
quickly."  He  will  not  tarry.  A  thousand  times  faster 
than  the  swiftest  chariot,  oiir  solar  system  and  the  surround- 


•  Architecture  of  the  Heavens,  77, 130. 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  463 

ing  firmament  wing  their  flight  toward  that  same  glorious 
cluster  in  Hercules.  As  our  firmament  ajpproaches,  under 
the  guidance  of  Omnipotent  wisdom,  it  too  must  fly  to  meet 
our  sun,  with  a  velocity  increasing  with  an  incalculable 
ratio.  The  celestial  city  will  then  be  seen  to  descend  from 
heaven.  Once  within  the  sphere  of  its  attractions,  our  sun 
and  surrounding  planets  will  feel  their  power.  Their  an- 
cient orbits  and  accustomed  revolutions  must  give  way  to 
the  higher  power.  Old  things  must  pass  av/ay,  and  all 
things  become  new.  A  new  heaven,  no  less  than  a  new 
earth,  will  form  the  dwelling  of  righteousness. 

These  are  no  longer  the  visions  of  prophecy  merely,  but 
the  sober  calculations  of  mathematical  science,  based  upon 
a  foundation  as  solid  as  the  attraction  of  gravitation,  and 
as  wide  as  the  existence  of  that  ether  whose  undulations 
convey  the  light  of  the  most  distant  stars ;  for,  so  surely  as 
that  attraction  is  efficient,  must  all  the  firmaments  of  the 
heavens  be  drawn  more  closely  together;  and  as  certainly 
as  they  revolve  not  in  empty  space,  but  in  a  medium  capa- 
ble of  retarding  Encke's  comet  three  days  in  every  revolu- 
tion, must  that  retarding  medium  bring  their  revolutions  to 
a  close.  "And  so,"  said  Herschel,  casting  his  eye  fearlessly 
toward  future  infinities,  "we  may  be  certain  that  the  stars 
in  the  Milky  Way  will  be  gradually  compressed,  through 
successive  stages  of  accumulation,  until  they  come  up  to 
what  may  be  called  the  ripening  period  of  the  globular 
cluster."  Unnumbered  ages  may  be  occupied  with  such  a 
grand  evolution  of  celestial  progress,  beyond  our  power  of 
calculation;  but  will  the  changes  of  created  things,  even 
then,  have  come  to  an  end?  Hear  again  the  voice,  not  of 
the  prophet,  but  of  the  astronomer:  "Around  us  lie  sta- 
bilities of  every  order;  but  it  is  stability  only  that  we  see, 
not  permanence.  As  the  course  of  our  inquiry  has  already 
amply  illustrated,  even  majestic  systems,  that  at  first  appear 
final  and   complete,  are   found  to  resolve  themselves  into 


464  TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

mere  steps  or  phases  of  still  loftier  progress.  Verily,  it  is 
an  astonishing  world !  Change  rising  above  change — cycle 
growing  out  of  cycle,  in  majestic  progression — each  new 
one  ever  widening,  like  the  circles  that  wreathe  from  a  spark 
of  flame,  enlarging  as  they  ascend,  finally  to  become  lost  in 
the  empyrean !  And  if  all  that  we  see,  from  earth  to  sun, 
and  from  sun  to  universal  star-work — that  wherein  we  best 
behold  images  of  eternity,  immortality  and  God-=-if  that  is 
only  a  state  or  space  of  a  course  of  being  rolling  onward 
evermore,  what  must  be  the  Creator,  the  Preserver,  the 
Guide  of  all ! — He  at  whose  bidding  these  phantasms  came 
from  nothingness,  and  shall  again  disappear; — whose  name, 
amid  all  things,  alone  is  Existence — I  AM  that  I  am? 

"  Of  old  hast  thou  laid  the  foundations  of  the  earth, 

"And  the  heavens  are  the  works  of  thy  hands; 

"  They  shall  perish, 

"  But  thou  shalt  endure  ; 

"  Yea,  all  of  them  shall  wax  old  like  a  garment : 

"  As  a  vesture  shalt  thou  change  them,  and  they  shall  be 
changed ; 

"  But  thou  art  the  same, 

"And  thy  years  shall  have  no  end. 

"  The  children  of  thy  servants  shall  continue, 

"And  their  seed  shall  be  established  before  thee." 

Psalm  cii.  25. 

"  And  I  saw  a  new  heaven,  and  a  new  earth ; 

"  For  the  first  heaven  and  the  first  earth  were  passed  away 

"  And  there  was  no  more  sea. 

"And  I  John  saw  the  holy  city,  New  Jerusalem, 

"  Coming  down  from  God  out  of  heaven, 

"  Prepared  as  a  bride  adorned  for  her  husband. 

"  And  I  heard  a  great  voice  out  of  heaven,  saying, 

"  Behold  the  tabernacle  of  God  is  with  men, 

"  And  he  will  dwell  with  them, 


TELESCOPIC  VIEWS  OP  SCRIPTURE.  465 

"  And  they  shall  be  his  people, 

"And  God  himself  shall  be  with  them,  and  be  their  God." 

Revelation  xxi. 

Reader,  is  this  glorious  heaven  your  inheritance  ?  Is  this 
unchangeable  Jehovah  your  God?  Are  you  looking  for 
and  hasting  unto  the  coming  of  the  day  of  God?  Is  it 
your  daily  prayer,  Even  so,  Lord  Jesus,  come  quickly  ? 

30 


CHAPTER    XIII. 


Science,  or  Faith 


"  Faith  is  destined  to  be  left  behind  in  the  onward  march 
of  the  human  intellect.  It  belongs  to  an  infantile  stage  of 
intellectual  development,  when  experience,  dependent  on 
testimony,  becomes  the  slave  of  credulity.  Children  and 
childish  nations  are  prone  to  superstition.  Religion  belongs 
properly  to  such.  Hence  the  endless  controversies  of  re- 
ligious sects.  But  as  man  advances  into  the  knowledge  of 
the  physical  sciences,  and  becomes  familiarized  with  math- 
ematical demonstration  and  scientific  experiment,  he  de- 
mands substantial  proofs  for  all  kinds  of  knowledge,  and  re- 
jects that  which  is  merely  matter  of  faith.  The  certainties 
of  science  succeed  the  controversies  of  creeds.  Science 
thus  becomes  the  grave  of  religion,  as  religion  is  vulgarly 
understood.  But  science  gives  a  new  and  better  religion  to 
the  world.  Instead  of  filling  men's  minds  with  the  vague 
terrors  of  an  unknown  futurity,  it  directs  us  to  the  best 
modes  of  improving  this  life." — "This  life  being  the  first 
in  certainty,  give  it  the  first  place  in  importance;  and  by 
giving  human  duties  in  reference  to  men  the  -precedence, 
secure  that  all  interpretations  of  spiritual  duty  shall  be  in 
harmony  with  human  progress." — "  Nature  refers  us  to 
science  for  help,  and  to  humanity  for  sympathy ;  love  to  the 
lovely  is  our  only  homage,  study  our  only  praise,  quiet  sub- 
mission to  the  inevitable  our  duty;  and  truth  is  our  only 
worship." — "Our  knowledge  is  confined  to  this  life;  and 
testimony,  and  conjecture,  and  probability,  are  all  that  caa 

(466) 


SCIENCE,   OR  FAITH?  467 

be  set  forth  in  regard  to  another." — "  Preach  nature  and 
science,  morality  and  art ;  nature,  the  only  subject  of  knoiol- 
edge ;  morality,  the  harmony  of  action ;  art,  the  culture  of 
the  individual  and  society."* 

Or,  iF  you  will  insist  upon  preaching  religion,  support  it 
"  with  such  proofs  as  accompany  physical  science.  This  I 
have  always  loved ;  for  I  never  find  it  deceives  me.  I  rest 
upon  it  with  entire  conviction.  There  is  no  mistake,  and 
can  be  no  dispute  in  mathematics.  And  if  a  revelation 
comes  from  God,  why  have  we  not  such  evidence  for  it  as 
mathematical  demonstration  ?  " 

Such  is  the  language  now  used  by  a  large  class  of  half- 
educated  people,  who,  deriving  their  philosophy  from  Comte, 
and  their  religion  from  the  Westminster  Review,  invite  us 
to  spend  our  Sabbaths  in  the  study  of  nature  in  the  fields 
and  museums,  turn  our  churches  into  laboratories,  exchange 
our  Bibles  for  encyclopedias,  give  ourselves  no  more  trouble 
about  religion,  but  try  hard  to  learn  as  much  science,  make 
as  much  money,  and  enjoy  as  much  pleasure  in  this  life  as 
we  can ;  because  we  know  that  we  live  now,  and  can  only 
believe  that  we  shall  live  hereafter.  I  do  not  propose  to  take 
any  notice  here  of  the  proposal  of  Secularism— for  that  is 
the  new  name  of  this  ungodliness — to  deliver  men  from  their 
lusts  by  scientific  lectures,  and  keep  them  moral  by  over- 
turning religion.  That  experiment  has  been  tried  already. 
But  it  is  worth  while  to  inquire,  Is  science  really  so  posi- 
tive, and  religion  so  uncertain,  as  these  persons  allege  ?  Is 
a  knowledge  of  the  physical  sciences  so  all  sufficient  for  our 
present  happiness,  so  attainable  by  all  mankind,  and  so  cer- 
tain and  infallible,  that  we  should  barter  our  immortality  for 
it?  And,  on  the  other  hand,  are  the  great  facts  of  religious 
experience,  and  the  foundations  of  our  religious  faith,  so 
dim,  and  .vague,  and  utterly  uncertain,  that  we  may  safely 


Holyoak's  Discussion  with  Grant  and  Tonney. 


468  SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH? 

consign  them  to  oblivion,  or  that  we  can  so  get  rid  of  them 
if  we  would? 

The  object  of  this  chapter  is  to  refute  both  parts  of  the 
Secularist's  statement ;  to  show  some  of  the  uncertainties, 
errors,  contradictions,  and  blunders  of  the  scientific  men  on 
whose  testimony  they  receive  their  science  ;  and  to  exhibit 
a  few  of  the  facts  of  religious  experience  which  give  a  suf- 
ficient warrant  for  the  Christian's  faith. 

Scientific  observations  are  made  by  fallible  men  exposed 
to  every  description  of  error,  prejudice  and  mistake ;  men 
who  can  not  possibly  divest  themselves  of  their  precon- 
ceived opinions  in  observing  facts,  and  framing  theories. 

Lord  Bacon  long  ago  observed  that  "  the  eye  of  the  hu- 
man intellect  is  not  dry,  but  receives  a  sufi'usion  from  the 
will  and  the  afi*ections,  so  that  it  may  be  almost  said  to  en- 
gender any  science  it  pleases.  For  what  a  man  wishes  to 
be  true,  that  he  prefers  believing."  "  If  the  human  intel- 
lect hath  once  taken  a  liking  to  any  doctrine,  either  because 
received  and  credited,  or  because  otherwise  pleasing,  it 
draws  everything  else  into  harmony  with  that  doctrine,  and 
to  its  support ;  and  albeit  there  may  be  found  a  more  pow- 
erful array  of  contradictory  instances,  these,  however,  it 
does  not  observe,  or  it  contemns,  or  by  distinction  extenu- 
ates, and  rejects."* 

A  prejudiced  observer  sees  the  facts  distorted  and  exag- 
gerated. "  Thus  it  is  that  men  will  not  see  in  the  phenom- 
ena what  alone  is  to  be  seen  ;  in  their  observations  they  in- 
terpolate and  expunge ;  and  this  mutilated  and  adulterated 
product  they  call  a  fact.  And  why?  Because  the  real 
phenomena,  if  admitted,  would  spoil  the  pleasant  music  of 
their  thoughts,  and  convert  its  factitious  harmony  into  a 
discord.  In  consequence  of  this  many  a  system  professing 
to  be  reared  exclusively  on  observation  and  fact,  rests,  in 


♦  Bacon  Novum  Organum,  I.  xlix.  xlvi. 


I 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  469 

reality,  mainly  upon  hypothesis  and  fiction.  A  pretended 
experience  is  indeed  the  screen  behind  which  every  illusive 
doctrine  regularly  retires.  '  There  are  more  false  facts/ 
says  Cullen,  '  current  in  the  world  than  false  theories.'  Fact, 
observation,  induction,  have  always  been  the  watchwords  of 
those  who  have  dealt  most  extensively  in  fancy.  "^'"^  We 
propose,  therefore,  to  show  that,  /.  The  students  of  the  phys- 
ical sciences  have  no  such  certain  knowledge  of  their  facts 
and  theories  as  Secularists  j)retend, 

1.  Mathematical  science  relating  merely  to  abstract  truth 
is  supposed  to  possess  powers  of  demonstration,  and  capa- 
bility of  scientific  certainty  superior  to  all  other  kinds  of 
knowledge.  But  the  moment  we  begin  to  apply  it  to  any 
existing  facts  we  enter  the  domain  of  liability  to  errors  as 
numerous  as  our  fallible  observations  of  these  facts ;  and 
when  we  attempt  to  apply  mathematical  demonstration  to 
the  infinite,  and  to  enter  the  domain  of  faith,  in  which  as 
immortals  we  are  chiefly  concerned,  it  baffles,  deceives,  and 
insults  our  reason      Take  the  following  illustrations : 

Let  an  infinite  whole  be  divided  into  halves ;  the  parts 
must  be  either  finite  or  infinite.  But  they  can  not  be  finite, 
else  an  infinite  whole  would  consist  of  a  finite  number  of 
parts ;  neither  can  they  be  infinite,  being  each  less  than  the 
infinite  whole. 

Again  :  it  is  mathematically  demonstrable,  that  any  piece 
of  matter  is  infinitely  divisible.  A  line  therefore  of  half  an 
inch  long  is  infinitely  divisible,  or  divisible  into  an  infinite 
number  of  parts.  Thus  we  have  an  infinite  half  inch. 
Further,  for  a  moving  body  to  pass  a  given  point  requires 
some  time ;  and  to  pass  an  infinite  number  of  points  must 
require  an  infinite  number  of  portions  of  time,  or  an  eter- 
nity ;  therefore,  as  half  an  inch  contains  an  infinite  number 
of  points,  it  will  require  eternity  to  pass  half  an  inch. 


*  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Lectures,  I.  53. 


470  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

Again  :  it  is  mathematically  demonstrable,  that  a  straight 
line,  the  asymptote  of  a  hyperbola,  may  eternally  approach 
the  curve  of  the  hyperbola  and  never  meet  it  But  no  axiom 
can  be  plainer  than  that  if  two  lines  continually  approach 
each  other  they  must  at  length  meet.  Here  is  a  demonstra- 
tion contradicting  an  axiom;  and  no  man  has  ever  yet 
shown  the  possibilities  of  reconciling  them,  nor  yet  of  de- 
nying either  side  of  the  contradiction. 

Again  :  it  is  a  fundamental  axiom,  contained  in  the  defi- 
nition of  a  circle,  that  it  must  have  a  center ;  but  the  non- 
existence of  this  center  is  mathematically  demonstrable,  as 
follows :  Let  the  diameter  of  the  circle  be  bisected  into  two 
equal  parts ;  the  center  must  be  in  one,  or  the  other,  of 
these  parts,  or  between  them.  It  can  not  be  in  one  of 
these  parts,  for  they  are  equal ;  and,  therefore,  if  it  is  in 
the  one,  it  must  also  be  in  the  other,  and  thus  the  circle 
would  have  two  centers,  which  is  absurd.  Neither  can  it 
be  between  them,  for  they  are  in  contact.  Therefore  the 
center  must  be  a  point,  destitute  of  extension,  something 
which  does  not  occupy  or  exist  in  space.  But  as  all  exist- 
ences exist  in  space,  and  this  supposed  center  does  not,  it 
can  not  be  an  existence ;  therefore  it  is  a  non-existence. 

In  like  manner  it  has  been  mathematically  demonstrated,* 
that  motion,  or  any  change  in  the  rate  of  progress  in  a  mov- 
ing body,  is  impossible;  because  in  passing  from  any  one 
decree  of  rapidity  to  another,  all  the  intermediate  degrees 
must  be  passed  through.  As  when  a  train  of  cars  moving 
four  miles  an  hour  strikes  a  train  at  rest,  the  resulting  in- 
stantaneous motion  is  two  miles  an  hour ;  and  the  first  train 
must  therefore  be  moving  at  the  rate  of  four,  and  at  the 
rate  of  two  miles  an  hour  at  the  same  time,  which  is  im- 
possible. And  so  the  ancients  demonstrated  the  impossi- 
bility of  motion. 


Journal  of  Speculative  Philososphy,  I.  20. 


SCIENCE,    OR    FAITH?  471 

Thus  the  non-existence  of  the  most  undeniable  truths, 
and  the  impossibilities  of  the  most  common  facts  are  mathe- 
matically demonstrable ;  and  the  proper  refutation  of  such 
reasoning  is,  not  the  scientific,  but  the  common  sensible ;  as 
when  Plato  refuted  the  demonstration  of  the  impossibility 
of  motion,  by  getting  up  and  walking  across  the  floor.  In 
the  hyperbola  we  have  the  mathematical  demonstration  of 
the  error  of  an  axiom.  In  the  infinite  inch  we  behold  an  ab- 
surdity mathematically  demonstrated  So  that  it  appears  we 
can  give  mathematical  demonstration  in  support  of  untruth, 
impossibilities  and  absurdities ;  and  our  reason  can  not  dis- 
cover the  error  of  the  reasoning !  Alas,  for  poor  humanity, 
if  an  endless  destiny  depended  upon  such  scientific  cer- 
tainty !  Yet  mathematical  reasoning  about  abstract  truth 
is  universally  conceded  to  be  less  liable  to  error  than  any 
other  form  of  scientific  analysis  This  line,  then,  is  too 
shoft  to  fathom  the  ocean  of  destiny ;  too  weak  to  bear  in- 
ferences from  even  the  facts  of  common  life. 

Attempts  have  indeed  been  made  to  apply  mathematics 
to  the  facts  of  life  in  what  is  called  the  doctrine  of  chances. 
By  this  kind  of  calculation  it  can  be  shown,  that  the  chances 
were  a  thousand  millions  to  one  that  you  and  I  should  never 
have  been  born.     Yet  here  we  are. 

But  when  we  begin  to  apply  mathematics  to  the  affairs  of 
every-day  life  we  immediately  multiply  our  chances  of  er- 
ror by  the  number  and  complexity  of  these  facts.  The 
proper  field  of  mathematics  is  that  of  magnitude  and  num- 
bers. But  very  few  subjects  are  capable  of  a  mathematical 
demonstration.  iVb  fact  whatever  which  depends  on  the 
will  of  God  or  man  can  be  so  proved.  For  mathematical 
demonstration  is  founded  on  necessary  and  eternal  relations, 
and  admits  of  no  contingencies  in  its  premises.  The  math- 
ematician may  demonstrate  the  size  and  properties  of  a  tri- 
angle, but  he  can  not  demonstrate  the  continuance  of  any 
actual  triangle  for  one  hour,  or  one  minute,  after  his  dem- 


472  SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH? 

onstration.  And  if  he  could,  how  many  of  my  most  im- 
portant affairs  can  I  submit  to  the  multiplication  table,  or 
lay  off  in  squares  and  triangles  ?  It  deals  with  purely  ideal 
figures,  which  never  did  or  could  exist.  There  is  not  a 
mathematical  line — length  without  breadth — in  the  universe. 
When  we  come  to  the  application  of  mathematics,  we  are 
met  at  once  by  the  fact  that  there  are  no  mathematical  fig- 
ures in  nature.  It  is  true  we  speak  of  the  orbits  of  the 
planets  as  elliptical  or  circular,  but  it  is  only  in  a  general 
way,  as  we  speak  of  a  circular  saw,  the  outline  of  its  teeth 
being  regularity  itself  compared  with  the  perturbations  of 
the  planets.  We  speak  of  the  earth  as  a  spheroid,  but  it  is 
a  spheroid  pitted  with  hollows  as  deep  as  the  ocean,  and 
crusted  with  irregular  protuberances  as  vast  as  the  Hima- 
laya and  the  Andes,  in  every  conceivable  irregularity  of  form. 
Its  seas,  coasts,  and  rivers  follow  no  straight  lines  nor 
geometrical  curves.  There  is  not  an  acre  of  absolutely 
level  ground  on  the  face  of  the  earth ;  and  even  its  waters 
will  pile  themselves  up  in  waves,  or  dash  into  breakers, 
rather  than  remain  perfectly  level  for  a  single  hour.  Its 
minuter  formations  present  the  same  regular  irregularity  of 
form.  Even  the  crystals,  which  approach  the  nearest  of 
any  natural  productions  to  mathematical  figures,  break  with 
compound  irregular  fractures  at  their  bases  of  attachment. 
The  surface  of  the  pearl  is  proportionally  rougher  than  the 
surface  of  the  earth,  and  the  dew-drop  is  not  more  spheri- 
cal than  a  pear.  As  nature  then  gives  no  mathematical 
figures,  mathematical  measurements  of  such  figures  can  be 
only  approximately  applied  to  natural  objects. 

The  utter  absence  of  any  regularity,  or  assimilation  to 
the  spheroidal  figure,  either  in  meridianal,  equatorial,  or 
parallel  lines,  mountain  ranges,  sea  beaches,  or  courses  of 
rivers,  is  fatal  to  mathematical  accuracy  in  the  more  ex- 
tended geographical  measurements.  It  is  only  by  taking 
the  mean  of  a  great  many  measurements  that  an  approxi- 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  473 

mate  accuracy  can  be  obtained.  Where  this  is  not  possible, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  measurements  of  high  mountains,  the 
truth  remains  undetermined  by  hundreds  of  feet;  or,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  earth's  spheroidal  axis,  Bessel's  measure- 
ment differs  from  Newton's,  by  fully  eleven  miles.*  The 
smaller  measures  are  proportionately  as  inaccurate.  No 
field,  hill,  or  lake,  has  an  absolute  mathematical  figure ;  but 
its  outline  is  composed  of  an  infinite  multitude  of  irregular 
curves  too  minute  for  man's  vision  to  discover,  and  too  nu- 
merous for  his  intellect  to  estimate.  No  natural  figure  was 
ever  measured  with  absolute  accuracy. 

All  the  resources  of  mathematical  science  were  employed 
by  the  constructors  of  the  French  Metric  System;  but  the 
progress  of  science  in  seventy  years  has  shown  that  every 
element  of  their  calculations  was  erroneous.  They  tried  to 
measure  a  quadrant  of  the  earth's  circumference,  supposing 
the  meridian  to  be  circular ;  but  Schubert  has  shown  that 
that  is  far  from  being  the  case ;  and  that  no  two  meridians 
are  alike ;  and  Sir  John  Herschel,  and  the  best  geologists, 
show  cause  to  believe  that  the  form  of  the  globe  is  con- 
stantly changing;  so  that  the  ancient  Egyptians  acted 
wisely  in  selecting  the  axis  of  the  earth's  rotation,  which  is 
invariable,  and  not  the  changing  surface  of  the  earth,  as 
their  standard  of  measure. 

The  Astronomer  Royal,  Piazzi  Smyth,  thus  enumerates 
the  errors  of  practice,  which  they  added  to  those  of  their 
erroneous  theory :  "  Their  trigonometrical  survey  for  their 
meter  length  has  been  found  erroneous,  so  that  their  meter 
is  no  longer  sensibly  a  meter;  and  their  standard  tempera- 
ture of  0°  centigrade  is  upset  one  way  for  the  length  of 
their  scale,  and  another  way  for  the  density  of  the  water 
employed ;  and  their  mode  of  computing  the  temperature 
correction  is  proved  erroneous;  and  their  favorite  natural 

*  Humboldt,  Cosmos,  Vol.  I.  p.  7,  156. 


474  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

reference  of  a  quadrant  of  the  earth  is  not  found  a  scientific 
feature  capable  of  serving  the  purpose  they  have  been  em- 
ploying it  for;  and  even  their  own  sons  show  some  dislike 
to  adopt  it  fully,  and  adhere  to  as  much  of  the  ancient  sys- 
tem as  they  can."* 

But  coming  down  to  more  practical  and  every-day  calcu- 
lations, in  which  money  is  invested,  how  very  erroneous  are 
the  calculations  of  our  best  engineers,  and  how  fatal  their 
results.  Nineteen  serious  errors  were  discovered  in  an  edi- 
tion of  Taylors  Logarithms^  printed  in  1796;  some  of 
which  might  have  led  to  the  most  dangerous  results  in  cal- 
culating a  ship's  place,  and  were  current  for  thirty-six 
years.  In  1832  the  Nautical  Almanac  published  a  cor- 
rection which  was  itself  erroneous  by  one  second,  and  a  new 
correction  was  necessary  the  next  year.  But  in  making 
this  correction  a  new  error  teas  committed  of  ten  degrees  f 
Who  knows  how  many  ships  were  run  ashore  by  that  error? 

Nor  can  our  American  mathematicians  boast  of  superior 
infallibility  to  the  French  or  British.  In  computing  the 
experiments  which  were  made  at  Lowell  (for  a  new  turbine 
wheel),  it  was  founa  that  when  the  gate  was  fully  open,  the 
quantity  of  water  dischj^ged  through  the  guides  was  seventy 
per  cent,  of  the  theoretical  discharge.  (An  error  of  thirty 
per  cent.)  The  effect  of  the  wheel  during  these  experi- 
ments was  eighty-one  and  a  half  per  cent,  of  the  power  ex- 
pended, but  when  the  gate  was  half  open  the  effect  was 
sixty-seven  per  cent,  of  the  power,  while  the  discharge 
through  the  guides  eleven  per  cent,  more  than  the  theoret- 
ical discharge.  But  when  the  opening  of  the  gate  was  still 
further  reduced  to  one-fourth  of  the  full  opening,  the  ef- 
fect was  also  reduced  to  forty-five  per  cent  of  the  power, 
while  the  discharging  velocity  was  raised  to  forty-nine  'per 


*  Our  Inheritance  in  the  Great  Pyramid,  366. 
t  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1862. 


SCIENCE,   OR  FAITH?  475 

cent,  more  than  that  given  hy  the  theory.^  An  unscientific 
man  would  hardly  call  that  good  guessing ;  but  it  was  the 
best  result  of  labored  and  expensive  scientific  calculation. 
No  wonder  the  London  Mechanics^  Magazine  says:  "More 
can  be  learned  in  this  way  (testing  engines  in  the  workshop) 
in  half  an  hour,  than  can  be  derived  from  the  theoretical 
instructions,  however  good,  in  a  year."  So  much  for  the 
infallibility  of  a  mathematical  demonstration.  In  regard 
even  to  the  very  limited  circle  of  our  relations  which  can 
be  measured  by  the  foot  rule,  and  the  small  number  of  our 
anxieties  which  may  be  resolved  by  an  equation,  if  by 
mathematical  accuracy  be  meant  anything  more  than  toler- 
able correctness,  or  by  mathematical  demonstration  a  very 
high  degree  of  probability,  mathematical  certainty  is  all  a 
fable. 

2.   Astronomy. 

The  omniscience  and  prescience  of  the  human  intellect 
have  been  largely  glorified  by  some  Infidel  lecturers,  upon 
the  strength  of  the  accuracy  with  which  it  is  possible  to 
calculate  and  predict  eclipses,  and  to  the  disparagement  of 
Bible  predictions  And  this  glorification  has  been  amaz- 
ingly swollen  by  Le  Terrier's  prediction  in  1846  of  the  dis- 
covery of  the  planet  Neptune.  But  the  prediction  of  s^ome 
unknown  motion  would  form  a  more  correct  basis  for  a  com- 
parison of  the  prophecies  of  science  with  those  of  Scrip- 
ture; such,  for  instance,  as  Immanuell  Kant's  prediction  of 
the  period  of  Saturn's  rotation  at  six  hours  twenty  three 
minutes  fifty-three  seconds;  "which  mathematical  calcula- 
tion of  an  unknown  motion  of  a  heavenly  body,"  he  says, 
"  is  the  only  prediction  of  that  kind  in  pure  Natural  Phi- 
losophy, and  awaits  confirmation  at  a  future  period."  It  is 
a  pity  that  this  unique  scientific  prediction  should  not  have 
had  better  luck,  for  the  encouragement  of  other  guessers; 


♦  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1852, 


476  -  SCIENCE,  OR  FAITH? 

but  after  waiting  long  and  vainly,  for  the  expected  confirm- 
ation, it  was  finally  falsified  by  Herschel's  discovery  of  spots 
on  the  surface  of  the  planet,  and  observation  of  the  true 
time,  ten  hours  sixteen  minutes  forty-four  seconds.*  This, 
however,  was  not  his  only  astronomical  prediction.  He 
predicted  that  immense  bodies  in  a  transition  state  between 
planets  and  comets,  and  of  very  eccentric  orbits,  would  be 
found  beyond  the  orbit  of  Saturn,  and  intersecting  it,  but 
no  such  bodies  have  been  discovered.  Uranus  and  Nep- 
tune have  no  cometary  character  whatever,  their  orbits  are 
less  eccentric  than  others  and  do  not  intersect,  nor  approach 
within  millions  of  miles  of  Saturn's  orbit.  The  verification 
of  Le  Verrier's  prediction  afi'ords  even  a  more  satisfactory 
proof  of  the  necessarily  conjectural  character  of  astronom- 
ical computations  of  unknown  quantities  and  distances. 
The  planet  Neptune  has  not  one-half  the  mass  which  he 
had  calculated ;  his  orbit,  which  was  calculated  as  very  el- 
liptical, is  nearly  circular;  and  the  error  of  the  calculation 
of  his  distance  is  three  hundred  millions  of  miles  !f 

"Let  us  then  be  candid,"  says  Loomis,  'and  claim  no 
more  for  astronomy  than  is  reasonably  due.  When  in  1846 
Le  Verrier  announced  the  existence  of  a  planet  hitherto 
unseen,  and  when  he  assigned  it  its  exact  position  in  the 
heavens,  and  declared  that  it  shone  like  a  star  of  the  eighth 
magnitude,  and  with  a  perceptible  disc,  not  an  astronomer  of 
France,  and  scarce  an  astronomer  in  Europe,  had  sufficient 
faith  in  the  prediction  to  prompt  him  to  point  his  telescope 
to  the  heavens.  But  when  it  was  announced  that  the  planet 
had  been  seen  at  Berlin,  that  it  was  found  within  one  de- 
gree of  the  computed  place,  that  it  was  indeed  a  star  of  the 
e!ghth  magnitude,  and  had  a  sensible  disc — then  the  en- 
thusiasm not  only  of  the  public  generally,  but  of  astrono- 


♦  Cosmos,  4,  618.    Dick's  Celestial  Scenery,  chap.  III.  Sec.  7. 
t  Cosmos,  1,  75.    Loomis'  Progress  of  Astronomy,  pp.  34,  40. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  477 

mcrs  also,  was  even  more  wonderful  than  their  former  apathy. 
The  sagacity  of  Le  Verrier  was  felt  to  be  almost  superhuman. 
Language  could  scarce  be  found  strong  enough  to  express 
the  general  admiration.  The  praise  then  lavished  upon 
Le  Verrier  was  somewhat  extravagant.  The  singularly 
close  agreement  between  the  observed  and  computed  places  of 
the  planet  laas  accidental.  So  exact  a  coincidence  could  not 
reasonably  have  been  anticipated.  If  the  planet  had  been 
found  even  ten  degress  from  what  Le  Verrier  assigned  as 
its  probable  place,  this  discrepancy  would  have  surprised  no 
astronomer.  The  discovery  would  still  have  been  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  events  in  the  history  of  astronomy,  and 
Le  Verrier  would  have  merited  the  title  of  First  Astrono- 
mer of  the  age."* 

Nevertheless,  astronomy  from  the  comparative  simplicity 
of  the  bodies  and  forces  with  which  it  has  to  deal,  and  the 
approximate  regularity  of  the  paths  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
may  be  regarded  as  the  science  in  which  the  greatest  pos- 
sible certainty  is  attainable.  It  opens  at  once  the  widest 
field  to  the  imagination,  and  the  noblest  range  to  the  rea- 
son ;  it  has  attracted  the  most  exalted  intellects  to  its  pur- 
suit, and  has  rewarded  their  toils  with  the  grandest  discov- 
eries. These  discoveries  have  been  grossly  abused  by  in- 
ferior minds,  ascribing  to  the  discoverers  of  the  laws  of  the 
universe  the  glory  due  to  their  Creator ;  and  boasting  of  the 
power  of  the  human  mind,  as  if  it  were  capable  of  explor- 
ing the  infinite  in  space,  and  of  calculating  the  movements 
of  the  stars  through  eternity.  Persons  who  could  not  cal- 
culate an  eclipse  to  save  their  souls,  have  risked  them  upon 
the  notion  that,  because  astronomers  can  do  so  with  con- 
siderable accuracy,  farmers  ought  to  reject  the  Bible,  unless 
its  predictions  can  be  calculated  by  algebra.  It  may  do 
such  persons  good,  or  at  least  prevent  them  from  doing  oth- 


*  Loomis'  Progress  of  Astronomy^  p.  34,  etc. 


478  SCIENCE,   OR  FAITH? 

ers  harm,  to  take  a  cursory  view  of  the  errors  of  astrono- 
mers; errors  necessary  as  well  as  accidental. 

Sir  John  Herschel,  than  whom  none  has  a  better  right 
to  speak  on  this  subject,  and  whose  devotion  to  that  noble 
science  precludes  all  supposition  of  prejudice  against  it, 
devotes  a  chapter  to  The  Errors  of  Astronomy,^  which  he 
classifies  and  enumerates : 

"  I.  External  causes  of  error,  comprehending  such  as  de- 
pend on  external  uncontrollable  circumstances;  such  as 
fluctuations  of  weather,  which  disturb  the  amount  of  re- 
fraction from  its  tabulated  value,  and  being  reducible  to  no 
fixed  laws,  induce  uncertainty  to  the  amount  of  their  own 
possible  magnitude. 

"II.  Errors  of  observation;  such  as  arise  for  instance 
frim  inexpertness,  defective  vision,  slowness  in  seizing  the 
exact  instant  of  the  occurrence  of  a  phenomenon,  or  pre- 
cipitancy in  anticipating  it;  from  atmospheric  indistinct- 
ness, insufficient  optical  power  in  the  instrument,  and  the 
like. 

"  Iir.  The  third,  and  by  far  the  most  numerous  class  of 
errors,  arise  from  causes  which  may  be  deemed  instrumental, 
and  which  may  be  divided  into  two  classes. 

"  The  first  arises  from  an  instrument  not  being  what  it 
professes  to  be,  which  is  error  of  workmanship.  Thus  if 
an  axis  or  pivot,  instead  of  being  as  it  ought,  exactly  cylin- 
drical, be  slightly  flattened  or  elliptical — if  it  be  not  ex- 
actly concentric  with  the  circle  which  it  carries — if  this 
circle  so  called  be  in  reality  not  exactly  circular — or  not  in 
one  plane — if  its  divisions,  intended  to  be  precisely  equi- 
distant, shall  be  in  reality  at  unequal  intervals — and  a  hun- 
dred other  things  of  the  same  sort. 

"The  other  subdivision  of  instrumental  errors  compre- 
hends such  as  arise  from  an  instrument  not  being  placed  in 

*  Outlines  of  Astronomy,  III.  Sec.  13,  140. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  479 

the  position  it  ought  to  have;  and  from  those  of  its  parts 
which  are  made  purposely  movable  not  being  properly  dis- 
posed, inter  se.  These  are  errors  of  adjustment.  Some  are 
unavoidable,  as  they  arise  from  a  general  unsteadiness  of 
the  soil  or  building  in  which  the  instruments  are  placed  * 
Others  again  are  consequences  of  imperfect  workmanship; 
as  when  an  instrument,  once  well  adjusted,  will  not  remain 
so.  But  the  most  important  of  this  class  of  errors  arise 
from  the  non-existence  of  natural  indications  other  than 
those  afforded  by  astronomical  observations  themselves, 
whether  an  instrument  has,  or  has  not,  the  exact  position 
with  respect  to  the  horizon,  and  the  cardinal  points,  etc., 
which  it  ought  to  have,  properly  to  fulfill  its  object. 

"Now,  with  regard  to  the  first  two  classes  of  error,  it 
must  be  observed,  that  in  so  far  as  they  can  not  be  reduced 
to  known  laws,  and  thereby  become  the  subjects  of  calcula- 
tion and  due  allowance,  they  actually  vitiate  to  their  full  ex- 
tent the  results  of  any  observations  in  which  they  subsist. 
With  regard  to  errors  of  adjustment,  not  only  the  possibil- 
ity, but  the  certainty  of  their  existence  in  every  imaginable 
form,,  in  all  instruments,  must  be  contemplated.  Human 
hands  or  machines  never  formed  a  circle,  drew  a  straight 
line,  or  executed  a  perpendicular,  nor  ever  placed  an  instru- 
ment in  perject  adjustment,  unless  accidentally,  and  then  only 
during  an  instant  of  time^ 

The  bearing  of  thej^e  important  and  candid  admissions  of  er- 
ror in  astronomical  observations  upon  all  kinds  of  other  ob- 
servations made  by  mortal  eyes,  and  with  instruments  framed 
by  human  hands,  in  every  department  of  science,  is  obvious. 
No  philosophical  observation  or  experiment  is  absolutely  ac- 
curate, or  can  possibly  be  more  than  tolerably  near  the  truth. 


*  Thus  several  of  the  best  telescopes  in  the  world  are  rendered 
nearly  useless  by  the  passage  of  heavy  railroad  trains  in  their 
vicinity. 


480  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

The  error  of  a  thousandth  part  of  an  inch  in  an  instrument 
will  multiply  itself  into  thousands,  and  millions  of  miles,  ac- 
cording to  the  distance  of  the  object,  or  the  profundity  of 
the  calculation.  Our  faith  in  the  absolute  infallibility  of  scien- 
tific observers,  and  consequently  in  the  absolute  certainty  of 
science,  being  thus  rudely  upheaved  from  its  very  foundations 
by  Sir  John  Herschel's  crowbar,  we  are  prepared  to  learn 
that  scientific  men  have  made  errors  great  and  numerous. 

To  begin  at  home,  with  our  own  little  globe,  where  cer- 
tainty is  much  more  attainable  than  among  distant  stars,  we 
have  seen  that  astronomers  of  the  very  highest  rank  are  by 
no  means  agreed  as  to  its  diameter.  Its  precise  form  is 
equally  difficult  to  determine.  Newton  showed  that  an 
ellipsoid  of  revolution  should  differ  from  a  sphere  by  a  com- 
pression of  YTJT'  The  mean  of  a  number  of  varying  meas- 
urements of  arcs,  in  five  different  places,  would  give  yws- 
The  pendulum  measurement  differs  very  considerably  from 
both,  and  "no  two  sets  of  pendulum  experiments  give  the 
same  result."*  The  same  liability  to  error,  and  uncertainty 
of  the  actual  truth,  attends  the  other  modes  of  ascertaining 
this  fundamental  measurement.  A  very  small  error  here 
will  vitiate  all  other  astronomical  calculations ;  for  the  earth's 
radius,  and  the  radius  of  its  orbit,  are  the  foot-rule  and  sur- 
veyor's chain  with  which  the  astronomer  measures  the  heav- 
ens. But  this  last  and  most  used  standard  is  uncertain; 
and  of  the  nine  different  estimates,  it  is  certain  that  eight 
must  be  wrong ;  and  probably  that  all  are  erroneous.  For 
example,  Encke,  in  1761,  gives  the  earth's  distance  from  the 

sun  at 95,141,830 

Encke,  in  1769,    -         -         -         95,820,610 

Lacaille, 76,927,900 

Henderson,  -         -         -         -         90,164,110 
Gillies  and  Gould,     -        -        -    96,160,000 

♦  Somerville'a  Physical  Sciences,  VI. 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  481 

Mayer,  -         -         -         -       104,097,100 

Le  Verricr,       -         .         -         -    91,066,350 
Sir  John  Ilerschel,        -         -         91,718,000 
Humboldt,        ....    82,728,000* 
Here  now  i^  the  fundamental   standard  measure  of  as- 
tronomy; and  nine  first-class  astronomers  are  set  to  deter- 
mine its  length;  but  their  measurements  range  all  the  way 
from  seventy-seven  to  one   hundred  and   four  millions  of 
miles — a  difference  of  nearly  one-fourth.       Why  the  old- 
fashioned  finger  and  thumb  measure  used  before  the  carpen- 
ter's two-foot  rule  was  invented  never  made  such  discrep- 
ancies; it  could  always  make  a  foot  within  an  inch  more  or 
less;  but  our  scientific  measurers,  it  seems,  can  not  guess 
within  two  inches  on  the  foot. 

Their  smaller  measurements  are  equally  inaccurate.  Lias 
says  the  Aurora  Borealis  is  only  two  and  a  half  miles  high; 
Hood  and  Hichardi'on  make  its  height  double  that,  or  five 
miles;  Olmsted  and  Twining  run  it  up  to  forty-two,  one  hun- 
dred, and  one  hundred  and  sixty  miles  !f  When  they  are 
thus  inaccurate  in  the  measurement  of  a  phenomenon  so 
near  the  earth,  how  can  we  believe  in  the  infallibility  of 
their  measurements  of  the  distances  of  the  stars  and  the 
nebulae  in  the  distant  heavens  ? 

The  moon  is  the  nearest  to  us  of  all  the  heavenly  bodies, 
and  exercises  the  greatest  influence  of  any,  save  the  sun, 
upon  our  crops,  ships,  health  and  lives,  and  consequently 
has  had  a  larger  share  of  astronomical  attention  than  any 
other  celestial  body.  But  the  most  conflicting  statements 
are  made  by  astronomers  regarding  her  state  and  influences. 
There  is  no  end  to  the  controversy  whether  the  moon  in- 
fluences the  weather ;  though  one  would  think  that  ques- 

*  Cosmos  IV.  477.     Phillips'  Address  to  the  British  Association, 
1865. 
t  North  BritUh  Review,  LXV. 
31 


482  ,  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

tion,  being  rather  a  terrestrial  one,  could  easily  be  decided. 
Schwabe  says  Herschel  is  wrong  in  saying  that  the  years  of 
most  solar  spots  were  fruitful ;  but  Wolf  looks  up  the  Zurich 
meteorological  tables,  and  confirms  Herschel. 

In  Fergusons  Astronomy,  the  standard  text-book  of  its 
day.  we  ac  informed  that  "Some  of  her  mountains  (the 
moon's)  by  comparing  their  height  with  her  diameter,  are 
found  to  be  three  times  higher  than  the  highest  hills  on 
earth."  They  would  thus  be  over  fifteen  miles  high.  But 
Sir  Wm  IL  rschel  assures  us  that  ''  The  generality  do  not 
exceed  half  a  mile  in  their  general  elevation."  Transactions 
of  the  Rof/al  Society,  May  11,  1780.  Beer  and  Madler  have 
measured  thirty-nine  whose  height  they  assure  us  exceed 
Mont-  Blan  \  But  M.  Gasscw,  of  the  Imperial  Observa- 
tory at  Wilna,  describes  to  us,  "a  mountain  mass  in  the  form 
of  a  meniscus  lens,  rising  in  the  middle  to  a  height  of  sev- 
enty-nine English  miles."*  As  this  makes  the  moon  lop- 
sided, with  the  heavy  side  toward  the  earth,  the  question 
of  an  atmosphere,  and  of  the  moon's  inhabitability  is  re- 
opened; and  the  discussion  seems  to  favor  the  man  in  the 
moon ;  only  he  keeps  on  the  other  side  always,  so  that  we 
can  not  sec  him. 

The  best  astronomers  have  gravely  calculated  the  most 
absurd  problems — for  instance  the  projection  of  meteorites 
from  lunar  volcanoes;  Poisson  calculated  that  they  would 
require  an  initial  velocity  of  projection  of  seven  thousand 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-five  feet  per  second;  others  de- 
manded eight  thousand  two  hundred  and  eighty  two;  Gi- 
bers demanded  fourteen  times  as  much;  but  La  Place,  the 
great  inventor  of  the  nebular  theory,  after  thirty  years' 
study  fixed  it  definitely  at  seven  thousand  eight  hundred 
and  sixty-two!     It  appears  that  the  absurdity  of  the  dis- 

♦  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1864,  168. 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  483 

charging  force  of  a  part  greater  than  the  attracting  force  of 
the  whole  never  occurred  to  him.* 

This  same  La  Place  supposed,  that  he  could  have  placed 
the  moon  in  a  much  better  position  for  giving  light  than 
she  now  occupies;  and  that  this  was  the  only  object  of  her 
existence.  As  this  was  not  done  he  argued  that  her  waxing 
and  waning  light  was  a  proof  that  she  was  not  located  by 
an  Omniscient  Creator.  He  says  he  would  have  placed  her 
in  the  beginning  in  opposition  to  the  sun,  in  the  plane  of  the 
ecliptic,  and  about  four  times  her  present  distance  from  us, 
with  such  a  motion  as  would  ever  maintain  that  position, 
thus  securing  full  moon  from  sunset  to  sunrise,  without  pos- 
sibility of  eclipse.  But  Lionville  demonstrates  that  "if  the 
moon  had  occupied  at  the  beginning  the  position  assigned 
her,  by  the  illustrious  author  of  the  Mecanique  Celeste^  she 
could  not  have  maintained  it  but  a  very  short  time."t  In 
short.  La  Place's  hypothetical  calculations  generally  have 
proved  erroneous  when  applied  to  any  existing  facts;  and 
we  have  no  reason  to  attach  more  value  to  his  nebular  the- 
ory calculations. 

The  sun  is  the  principal  orb  of  our  system,  and  by  far 
the  most  conspicuous,  and  the  most  observed  of  all  observers^ 
astronomers  included  But  we  have  seen  already  how  con- 
tradictory their  measurements  of  his  distance,  and  their 
ob  ervations  of  the  influence  of  his  spots  Far  more  con- 
fli  ting  are  the  theories  as  to  his  constitution,  of  which  in- 
deed we  may  truly  say  very  little  was  known  before  the 
application  of  photography  and  the  spectroscope  to  heliog- 
raphy  within  the  last  seven  years.  One  astronomer  fixed 
the  period  of  his  rotation  at  twenty-five  days,  fourteen  hours, 
anl  eight  minutes;  another  at  twenty-six  days,  forty-six 
minutes ;  another  at  twenty-four  days,  twenty-eight  minutes.J; 

*  Co-mos  I.  109. 
t  Cosmos  IV.  501. 
X  Cosmos  IV.  378. 


484  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 


In  regard  to  the  sun's  heat,  a  matter  fundamental  to  the 
nebular  theory,  the  calculations  difi'er  widely,  and  some  of 
them  must  be  grossly  erroneous.  M.  Vicairc  called  the 
attention  of  the  French  Academy,  at  a  recent  meeting,  to 
this  unsatisfactory  condition  of  science.  Father  Secchi  es- 
timates it  at  eighteen  million  Fahrenheit;  while  Pouillet 
says  it  ranges  from  two  thousand  six  hundred  and  sixty-two 
to  three  thousand  two  hundred  and  one ;  and  others  range 
from  two  hundre  1  thousand  downward.  The  most  singular 
thing  is  that  these  results  are  derived  from  observations  or 
radiations  made  by  apparatus  identical  in  principle.*  But 
Watcrston  calculates  the  temperature  of  the  solar  surface 
at  above  ten,  and  probably  twelve  million  Fahrenheit. f 

Now  what  feeds  these  enormous  fires?  The  old  opinion 
of  astronomy,  that  the  sun  was  a  mass  of  fire,  was  assailed 
by  Sir  Wm.  Herschel,  who  maintained  that  it  was  in  the 
condition  of  a  perpetual  magnetic  storm.  This  notion  was 
altered  into  the  belief  of  a  central  dark  body,  surrounded 
by  a  stratum  of  clouds,  outside  of  which  is  a  photosphere 
of  light  and  heat;  which  some  made  one  thousand  five  hun- 
dred miles  in  depth,  others  four  thousand.  Outside  of  this 
was  another  layer  of  rose-colored  clouds.  To  this  theory 
Arago,  Sir  John  Herschcl,  and  Humboldt  assented.  But 
Le  Verrier  declares  that  the  facts  observed  during  late 
eclipses  are  contrary  to  this  theory,  and  a  new  theory  is 
slow  in  process  of  construction,  to  be  demolished  in  its  turn 
by  later  observations.! 

One  of  the  most  recent  theories  is  that  the  fuel  is  fur- 
nished by  a  stream  of  meteorites,  planetoids,  and  comets, 
falling  in  by  the  power  of  attraction,  and  being  speedily 
converted  into  gas  flames ;  a  process  the  very  reverse  of  the 
theory  of  the  evolution  of  the  solid  celestial  bodies  from 

*  Harper's  Magazine,  June,  1872,  p.  149, 
t  Annual  Scientific  Discovery,  1864,  134. 
t  Cosmos  III.  40;  IV.  363.     Annual,  1861,  395,  396. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  485 

gas.  But  it  is  pretty  evident  from  these  conflicting  theo- 
ries that  nobody  knows  anything  certainly  as  to  the  materi- 
als of  the  sun,  or  the  fuel  which  feeds  his  flames.  But  if 
the  very  best  astronomers  do  not  know  of  what  he  is  made, 
is  it  not  too  great  a  demand  upon  our  credulity  to  ask  us 
to  believe  that  they  can  tell  how  he  was  made  ? 

The  size,  density,  and  distances  of  the  planets,  which 
form  such  essential  elements  in  the  calculations  of  the  neb- 
ular theory  of  evolution,  are  equally  uncertain.  Ten  or 
twelve  years  ago  Mercury  was  believed  to  be  nearly  three 
times  as  dense  as  the  earth  (2.94) ;  and  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution was  partly  based  upon  this  assumed  fact.  But  Hau- 
sen  now  finds  that  it  is  not  half  so  dense ;  that,  as  compared 
with  the  earth,  it  is  only  1.22;  and  that  its  mass  is  less  than 
half  (^)  of  what  had  been  confidently  calculated.*  Cor- 
rections of  the  masses  and  densities  of  other  planets  are 
also  ofiiered. 

Still  wider  differences  prevail  in  calculating  the  velocities 
of  these  bodies;  velocities  calculated  and  found  to  corre- 
spond with  the  theory  of  evolution.  Bianchini  gives  the 
period  of  the  rotation  of  Venus  at  twenty -four  days,  eight 
hours ;  but  Schroeter  says  it  is  not  as  many  hours  as  Bian- 
chini gives  days;  that  it  is  only  twenty-three  hours  and 
twenty  minutes.  Sir  Wm.  Herschel  can  not  tell  which  is 
right,  or  whether  both  are  wrong. f 

From  such  imperfect  and  erroneous  calculations  astrono- 
mers have  deduced  what  they  called  a  law,  which  holds  the 
same  place  in  nature  that  the  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut 
maintain  in  history;  and  which  like  them  have  imposed 
upon  the  credulous.  Titius  and  Bode  imagined  that  they 
had  discovered  that,  "  When  the  distances  of  the  planets 
are  examined,  it  is  found  that  they  are  almost  all  removed 


*  Cosmos  lY.  474. 

t  Kendall's  Uranography,  p.  11. 


486  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITn? 


from  each  other  by  distances  which  are  in  the  same  propor- 
tion as  their  magnitudes  increase."  And  this  law  played 
an  important  part  in  introducing  the  theory  of  evolution, 
which,  it  was  alleged,  exactly  corresponded  with  such  an 
arrangement  But  more  accurate  calculations  and  recent 
discoveries  have  dissipated  the  supposed  or  ler  of  progres- 
sion. Humboldt  says  of  it,  it  is  "  a  law  which  scarcely  de- 
serves this  name,  and  which  is  called  by  Lalande  and  De- 
lambre  a  play  of  numbers ;  by  others  a  help  for  the  mem- 
ory. *  *  *  In  reality  the  distances  between  Jupiter, 
Saturn,  and  Uranus  approximate  very  closely  to  the  dupli- 
cation. Nevertheless,  since  the  discovery  of  Neptune, 
which  is  much  too  near  Uranus,  the  defectiveness  in  the 
progression  has  become  strikingly  evident."  And  Olbers 
rejects  it,  as  "  contrary  to  the  nature  of  all  truths  which 
merit  the  name  of  laws ;  it  agrees  only  approximately  with 
observed  facts  in  the  case  of  most  planets,  and  what  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  once  observed,  not  at  all  in  the  case 
of  Mercury.  It  is  evident  that  the  series,  4,  4+3,  4+6, 
4+12,4+48,  4+96,4+192,  with  which  the  distances  should 
correspond,  is  not  a  continuous  series  at  all.  The  number 
which  precedes  4+3  should  not  be  4;  i.  c,  4+0,  but  4+1  J. 
Therefore  between  4  and  4+3  there  should  be  an  infinite 
number,  or  as  Wurm  expresses  it,  for  n=l,  there  is  obtained 
from  4+2"-l3 ;  not  4,  but  5^."*  Thus  this  so-called  law 
is  erroneous  in  both  ends,  and  defective  in  the  middle. 
Finally  it  has  been  utterly  abolished  by  the  discovery  of  the 
planet  Vulcan,  which  does  not  correspond  to  any  such  law.f 
If  the  theory  of  evolution  then  corresponds  to  Bode's  law, 
as  its  advocates  alleged,  it  corresponds  to  a  myth. 

About  the  nebulae  which  have  played  so  large  a  part  in 
the  atheistic  world  building,  our  astronomers  are  utterly  at 


♦  Cosmos,  443-5. 

t  North  British  Review,  No.  LXV. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  487 

variance.  Sir  John  Ilerschel  says  they  are  fiir  away  beyond 
the  stars  in  space.  But  the  Melbourne  astronomer,  M.  Le 
Seur,  suggests  that  the  star  Eta  and  the  nebulous  matter  are 
neighbors ;  that  the  nebulous  matter  formerly  around  it, 
which  has  recently  disappeared,  while  the  star  has  blazed 
up  into  flames,  is  being  absorbed  and  digested  by  the  star. 
This  has  happened  before,  thirty  years  ago,  to  that  star. 
Why  may  not  our  sun  also  absorb  and  burn  up  nebula).  But 
if  so,  what  becomes  of  the  rings  of  the  nebular  theory? 

The  light  of  the  stars  is  almost  the  only  medium  through 
which  we  can  observe  them,  and  it  would  naturally  be  sup- 
posed that  astronomers  would  be  at  pains  to  have  clear  views 
of  light  But  the  most  surprising  differences  of  statement 
regarding  it  exist  among  the  very  first  astronomers.  They 
do  not  see  it  alike  Herschel  says  a  Ilerculis  is  red  ;  Struve 
says  it  is  yellow.  They  dispute  about  its  natu  e,  motion, 
and  quantity.  Some  astronomers  believe  the  sun  to  be  the 
great  source  of  light,  at  least  to  our  system.  But  Nasmyth 
informs  the  Royal  Astronomical  Society  that  the  true  source 
of  latent  light  is  not  in  the  solar  orb,  but  in  space  itself, 
and  that  the  grand  function  of  the  sun  is  to  act  as  an  agent 
for  the  bringing  forth  into  existence  the  luciferous  element, 
which  element  I  suppose  to  be  diffused  throu  jjhput  the 
boundless  regions  of  space."*  The  nature  of  light  is  how- 
ever still  as  great  a  mystery  as  when  Job  demanded,  "Where 
is  the  way  w^here  light  dwelleth?  "  The  undulatjry  theory 
of  light,  now  generally  accepted,  assumes  that  light  is 
caused  by  the  vibrations  of  the  ether  in  a  plane  transverse 
to  the  direction  of  propagation.  In  order  to  transmit  mo- 
tions of  this  kind,  the  parts  of  the  luminiferous  medium 
must  resist  compression  and  distortion,  like  those  of  an  elas- 
tic solid  body ;  its  transverse  elasticity  being  great  enough 
to  transmit  one  of  the  most  powerful  kinds  of  physical  en- 


Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1852,  119. 


488  SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH? 

ergy,  witli  a  speed  in  comparison  with  wliieh  that  of  the 
swiftest  planets  of  our  system  is  inappreciable,  and  its  lon- 
gitudinal elasticity  immensely  greater — both  of  these  elas- 
ticities being  at  the  same  time  so  weak  as  to  offer  no 
perceptible  resistance  to  the  motion  of  the  planets,  and 
other  visible  bodies.^  Is  the  velocity  of  light  uniform  ?  Or, 
if  Variable,  is  the  variation  caused  by  the  original  difference 
of  the  projectile  force  of  the  different  suns,  stars,  comets, 
etc.?  or  by  the  different  media  through  which  it  passes? 
Avago  alleges  that  light  moves  more  rapidly  through  water 
than  through  air;  but  Brequet  asserts  that  the  fact  is  just 
the  rcverse.f  Both  admit  that  its  velocity  varies  with  the 
medium.  Jacobs  alleges  that  during  the  trigonometrical 
survey  of  India  he  observed  the  extinction  of  light  reflected 
through  sixty  miles  of  horizontal  atmosphere.J  How,  then, 
can  astronomers  make  any  reliable  calculations  of  the  veloc- 
ity of  light  reaching  us  through  regions  of  space  filled  with 
unknown  media?  Newton  calculated  the  velocity  of  light 
at  one  hundred  and  fifty-five  thousand  five  hundred  and 
fifty  five  and  five-ninth  miles  a  second;  but  Encke  shows 
he  erred  thirty  per  cent.  Other  eminent  astronomers  make 
the  time  of  the  passage  of  light  from  the  sun  all  the  way 
from  eleven  to  fourteen  minutes,  instead  of  Newton's  seven 
or  eight.  Busch  reckons  its  velocity  at  one  hundred  and 
sixty-seven  thousand  nine  hundred  and  seventy-six  miles; 
Draper  one  hundred  and  ninety-two  thousand;  Struve  two 
hundred  and  fifteen  thousand  eight  hundred  and  fifty-four. 
"Wheatstone  alleges  that  electric  light  travels  at  the  rate  of 
two  hundred  and  eighty-eight  thousand  miles  a  second ;  but 
Frizeau's  calculations  and  measurements  give  only  one 
hundred  and  sixty-seven  thousand  five  hundred  and  twenty- 


*  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1854,  150. 
tCosmos  III.  115. 
X  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1860. 


SCIENCE,   OR  PAITn?  489 

eight  for  the  light  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen.^  Thus  we  have 
a  variation  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  miles  a 
second  in  all  calculations  of  sidereal  distances.  Humboldt 
tries  to  reconcile  these  differences  by  the  suggestion,  that 
no  one  will  deny,  that  lights  of  different  magnetic  or  elec- 
tric processes  may  have  different  velocities;  a  fact  which 
throws  all  sidereal  astronomy  into  inextricable  confusion, 
and  sets  aside  all  existing  time  tables  on  sidereal  railroads. 

They  are  no  more  agreed  as  to  its  composition  after  it 
reaches  us  than  as  to  its  velocity.  Newton  taught  that  it 
consisted  of  seven  colors;  Wallaston  denies  more  than  four; 
Brewster  reduces  the  number  to  three — red,  yellow,  and 
blue.  Newton  measures  the  yellow  and  violet,  and  finds 
them  as  forty  to  eighty.  Fraunhofer  makes  the  proportion 
twenty-seven  to  one  hundred  and  nine.  Wallaston's  spec- 
trum differs  from  both.  Field  says,  "No  one  has  ventured 
to  alter  either  estimate,  and  no  one  who  is  familiar  with  the 
spectrum  will  put  much  faith  in  any  measurement  of  it,  by 
whosoever  and  with  what  care  soever  made."f  He  says 
white  light  is  composed  of  five  parts  red,  three  yellow,  and 
eight  blue ;  which  differs  wholly  from  Brewster,  who  gives 
it  three  parts  red,  five  yellow,  and  two  of  blue. 

Equally  wild  are  their  calculations  of  the  quantity  of 
light  emitted  by  particular  stars.  Badeau  calculates  Vul- 
can's light  at  2.25  that  of  Mercury;  Lias,  from  the  same 
observations,  at  7.36,  nearly  three  times  as  much.  J  Sir 
John  Herschel  calculates  that  Alpha  Centauri  emits  more 
light  than  the  sun ;  that  the  light  of  Sirius  is  four  times  as 
great,  and  its  parallax  much  less;  so  that  by  such  a  calcu- 
lation Sirius  would  have  an  intrinsic  splendor  sixty-three 
times  that  of  the  sun.     But  Wallaston  only  calculates  his 


*  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1852,  139. 
t  Annual  of  Scientific  Discovery,  1864,  166. 
X  Plurality  of  Worlds,  XII. 


490  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

light  at  one-fourth  of  this  amount;  and  Steinheil  makes  it 
only  one-two-hundredth  part  of  the  former  estimate.-^ 

Astronomers  have  lately  been  comforting  the  world  with 
the  assurance  that  we  have  little  to  fear'  from  comets;  that 
the  superstitious  fear  of  the  comets  prevalent  in  the  past 
was  ill  founded,  because  comets  are  so  very  thin  that  wc 
might  pass  through  one  without  its  breaking  up  anything. 
But  that,  as  Principal  Leitch  shows  us,  is  not  the  only  ques- 
tion. "  We  know  that  the  most  deadly  miasmata  are  so 
subtle  that  it  is  impossible  to  detect  them  by  any  chemical 
tests,  and  a  very  homeopathic  dose  of  a  comet,  in  addition 
to  the  elements  of  our  own  atmosphere,  might  produce  the 
most  fatal  effects. "f 

The  phenomena  indicative  of  cosmical  processes  are  out 
of  the  range  of  astronomical  observation.  We  can  only 
observe  those  indicated  by  light,  and  gravitation;  but  how 
small  a  proportion  of  the  formative  processes  of  our  own 
world  indicate  themselves  by  these  two  classes  of  phenomena ! 
How  few  of  the  chemical,  vegetative,  animal,  moral,  social, 
or  even  geological  processes,  now  progressing  under  our  own 
observation,  could  give  us  notice  of  their  existence  by  the 
two  channels  of  light  and  gravitation?  How,  then,  can 
philosophers  ever  learn  the  process  of  building  worlds  like 
our  own  in  which  many  other  powers  are  at  work? 

Astronomers  are  not  all  agreed  as  to  the  existence  of  a 
cosmical  ether ;  nor  do  those  who  assert  it  agree  as  to  its 
properties.  What  is  its  nature,  density,  power  of  refrac- 
tion and  reflection  of  light,  and  resistance  to  motion?  What 
is  its  temperature?  Is  it  uniform,  or  like  "Our  atmosphere, 
ever  varying?  These  are  manifestly  questions  indispensable 
to  be  answered  before  any  theory  of  the  development  of 
worlds  is  even  conceivable.     But  of  the  properties  of  this 


*  North  British  Keview,  LXV. 
f  God's  Glory  in  the  Heavens,  168. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  491 

all-extending  cosmical  atmosphere,  which  is  the  very  breath 
of  life  of  the  development  theory,  astronomers  present  the 
most  conflicting  statements.  Professor  Vaughan  says,  "  If 
such  a  body  exists,  it  is  beyond  our  estimation  of  all  that 
is  material.  It  has  no  weight,  according  to  our  idea  of 
weight;  no  resistance,  according  to  our  idea  of  calculating 
resistance  by  mechanical  tests;  no  volume,  on  our  views  of 
volume;  no  chemical  activity,  according  to  our  experimental 
and  absolute  knowledge  of  chemical  action.  In  plain  terms, 
it  presents  no  known  re-ageney  by  which  it  can  be  isolated 
from  surrounding  or  intervening  matter."^  Or,  in  plainer 
terms,  we  know  nothing  about  it. 

The  only  fact  about  it  which  astronomers  have  ventured 
to  specify  and  calculate  is  its  temperature;  for  upon  this 
all  the  power  of  the  development  world-making  process  de- 
pends. But  they  are  very  far  from  any  agreement;  indeed, 
they  are  much  farther  apart  than  the  equator  from  the  poles. 
Stanley  finds  the  temperature  of  absolute  space — 58° ; 
Arago— 70°;  Humboldt— 85°;  Herschel— 132°  ;  Saigey— 
107°;  Poulett,  to  be  exact  to  a  fraction— 223^°  below  the 
freezing  point ;  though  when  it  gets  to  be  so  cold  as  that 
one  would  think  he  would  hardly  stay  out  of  doors  to  meas- 
ure fractions  of  a  degree.  But  Poisson  thinks  he  is  over 
200°  too  cold,  and  fixes  the  temperature  accurately,  in  his 
own  opinion,  8^^°.  Moreover,  he  alleges  that  there  is  no 
more  uniformity  in  the  temperature  of  the  heavens  than  in 
that  of  our  own  atmosphere,  owing  to  the  unequal  radia- 
tions of  heat  from  the  stars;  and  that  the  earth,  and  the 
whole  solar  system,  receive  their  internal  heat  from  without, 
while  passing  through  hot  regions  of  space. f 

From  this  chaos  of  conflicting  assertions  of  unknown 
facts  the  theory  of  development  develops  itself.     Its  funda- 


*  Annual  Scientific  Discovery,  1863,  324. 
t  Cosmos  IV.  378. 


492  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

mental  postulate  is  the  difference  of  temperature  between 
the  nebulas  and  the  surrounding  space.  But  the  fact  is  that 
nobody  knows  what  is  the  temperature  of  either  space  or 
nebulas,  nor  is  anybody  likely  ever  to  know  enough  of  either 
to  base  any  scientific  theory  upon.  Astronomy  will  never 
teach  men  how  to  make  worlds ;  nor  is  it  of  the  least  conse- 
quence that  it  does  not;  since  we  could  not  make  them, 
even  if  we  knew  how. 

From  these  specimens  of  the  errors  and  contradictions  of 
the  best  astronomers,  the  teachers  upon  whose  accuracy  we 
depend  for  our  faith  in  science,  we  can  see,  that  though  the 
Pope  and  the  Infidel  savans  may  claim  infallibility,  yet  after 
all  the  savant  is  just  as  infallible  as  the  Pope,  viz :  he  is 
right  when  he  is  right,  and  he  is  wrong  when  he  is  wrong, 
and  that  happens  frequently  and  common  folks  can  not  al- 
ways tell  when.  There  is  no  such  thing,  then,  as  infallible 
science  upon  faith,  in  which  I  can  venture  to  reject  God's 
Bible,  and  risk  my  soul's  salvation.  Science  is  founded  on 
faith  in  very  fallible  men. 

3.  Geology,  one  of  the  most  recent  of  the  sciences,  and 
in  the  hands  of  Infidel  nurses  one  of  the  most  noisy,  has 
been  supposed  to  be  anti-Christian.  The  supposition  is  ut- 
terly unfounded.  Such  of  its  facts  as  have  been  well  ascer- 
tained have  demonstrated  the  being,  wisdom,  and  goodness 
of  an  Almighty  Creator,  with  irresistible  evidence.  Nor, 
though  a  wonderful  outcry  has  been  raised  about  the  oppo- 
sition between  the  records  of  the  rocks  and  the  records  of 
the  Bible,  regarding  the  antiquity  of  the  earth,  has  any  one 
yt^t  succeeded  in  proving  such  an  opposition,  for  the  plain 
reason  that  neither  the  Bible  nor  geology  says  how  old  it 
is  They  both  say  it  is  very  old.  The  Bible  says,  "In  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth;"  and  by 
the  use  which  it  makes  of  the  word  beginning,  leaves  us  to 
infer  that  it  was  long  before  the  existence  of  the  human 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  493 

race.*  If  the  geologist  could  prove  that  the  earth  was  six 
thousand  millions  of  years  older  than  Adam,  it  would  con- 
tradict no  statement  of  the  Bible  The  Bible  reader,  there- 
fore, has  no  reason  to  question  any  well  ascertained  fact  of 
geology.  But  when  Infidels  come  to  us  with  their  geolog 
ical  theories  about  the  mode  in  which  God  made  the  earth, 
or  in  which  the  earth  made  itself,  and  how  long  it  took  to 
do  it,  and  tell  us  that  they  have  got  scientific  demonstration 
from  the  rocks  that  the  Bible  account  is  false,  and  that  our 
old  traditions  can  not  stand  before  the  irresistible  evidence 
of  science,  we  are  surely  bound  to  look  at  the  foundation  of 
facts,  and  the  logical  superstructure,  which  sustain  such 
startling  conclusions 

Now  it  is  remarkable  that  every  Infidel  argument  against 
the  statements  of  the  Bible,  or  rather  against  what  they 
suppose  to  be  the  statements  of  the  Bible,  is  based,  not  on 
the  facts,  but  upon  the  theories,  of  geology.  I  do  not  know 
one  which  is  based  solely  on  facts  and  inductions  from  facts. 
Every  one  of  them  has  a  wooden  leg,  and  goes  hobbling  upon 
an  if. 

Take  for  example  the  argument  most  commonly  used — 
that  which  asserts  the  vast  antiquity  of  the  earth — a  thing 
in  itself  every  way  likely,  and  not  at  all  contrary  to  Scrip- 
ture, if  it  could  be  scientifically  proved.  But  how  docs  our 
Infidel  geologist  set  about  his  work  of  proving  that  the 
earth  is  any  given  age,  say  six  thousand  millions  of  years? 
A  scientific  demonstration  must  rest  upon  facts — well  as- 
certained facts.  It  admits  of  no  suppositions.  Now  what 
arc  the  facts  given  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  earth's  age? 
The  geologist  finds  a  great  many  layers  of  rocks,  one  above 
the  other,  evidently  formed  below  the  water,  some  of  them 
out  of  the  fragments  of  former  rocks,  containing  bones, 
shells,  and  casts  of  fishes,  and  tracks  of  the  feet  of  bird" 

*  See  this  proved  chapter  X.,  Daylight  Before  Stmrise, 


494  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

made  when  these  rocks  were  in  the  state  of  soft  mud,  and 
altogether  several  miles  thick.  He  has  a  great  multitude 
of  such  facts  before  him,  but  they  are  all  of  this  character. 
Not  one  of  them  gives  him  the  element  of  time.  They  an- 
nounce to  him  a  succession  of  events,  such  as  successive 
generations  of  fishes  and  plants ;  but  not  one  of  them  tells 
how  long  these  generations  lived.  The  condition  of  th( 
world  was  so  utterly  different  then,  from  what  it  is  now,  that 
no  inference  can  be  drawn  from  the  length  of  the  lives  of 
existing  races,  which  are  generally  also  of  different  species. 
The  utmost  any  man  can  say,  in  such  a  case,  is,  I  suppose, 
for  there  is  no  determinate  element  of  time  in  the  statement 
of  the  problems,  and  so  no  certain  time  can  appear  in  the 
solution. 

Here  is  a  problem  exactly  similar  A  certain  house  is 
found  to  be  built  with  ten  courses  of  hewn  stone  in  the 
basement,  forty  courses  of  brick  in  the  first  story,  thirty- 
six  courses  in  the  second,  thirty-two  in  the  third ;  with  a 
roof  of  nine  inch  rafters  covered  with  inch  boards,  and  an 
inch  and  a  half  layer  of  coal  tar'and  gravel ;  how  long  was 
it  in  building?  Would  not  any  school-boy  laugh  at  the 
absurdity  of  attempting  such  a  problem?  He  would  say, 
"  How  can  I  tell  unless  I  know  whence  the  materials  came, 
how  they  were  conveyed,  how  many  workmen  were  employed, 
and  how  much  each  could  do  in  a  day?  If  the  brick  had 
to  be  made  by  hand,  the  lumber  all  dressed  with  the  hand- 
saw and  jack-plane,  the  materials  all  hauled  fifty  miles  in 
an  ox-cart,  the  brick  carried  up  by  an  Irishman  in  a  hod, 
and  the  work  done  by  an  old,  slow-going,  jobbing  contractor, 
who  could  only  afford  to  pay  three  or  four  men  at  a  time, 
they  would  not  get  through  in  a  year^  But  if  the  building 
stone  and  sand  were  found  in  excavating  the  cellar,  if  the 
brick  were  made  by  steam  and  came  by  railroad,  a  good 
master  builder,  with  steam  saw  and  planing  mills,  steam 


SCIENCE,    OR    FAITH?  495 


hoists,  and  a  strong  force  of  workmen,  would  run  it  up  in 
three  weeks." 

So  our  geologist  ought  to  say;  "I  do  not  know  either  the 
source  of  the  materials  of  the  earth's  strata,  nor  the  means 
by  which  they  were  conveyed  to  their  present  positions; 
therefore  I  can  not  tell  the  time  required  for  their  forma- 
tion. If  the  crust  of  the  earth  was  created  originally  of 
solid  granite,  and  the  materials  of  the  strata  were  ground 
down  by  the  slow  action  of  frost  and  rain,  and  conveyed  to 
the  ocean  by  the  still  slower  agencies  of  rivers  and  torrents 
— hundreds  of  millions  of  ages  would  not  effect  the  work. 
But  if  the  earth  was  created  in  such  a  shape  as  wouU  ra- 
tionally be  considered  the  best  adapted  for  future  stratifica- 
tion ;  if  its  crust  consisted  of  the  various  elements  of  which 
granite  and  other  rocks  are  composed;  if  these  materials 
were  ejected  in  a  granular  or  comminuted  form,  and  in  vast 
quantities  by  submarine  volcanoes  generated  by  the  chemi- 
cal action  of  these  elements  upon  each  other;  and  if,  after 
being  diffused  by  the  currents  of  the  ocean,  and  consolidated 
by  its  vast  pressure,  the  underlying  strata  were  baked  and 
melted  and  crystallized  into  granite*  -a  very  few  centuries 
would  suffice.  Until  these  indispensable  preliminaries  are 
settled,  geology  can  make  no  calculations  of  the  length  of 
time  occupied  by  the  formation  of  the  strata." 

But  instead  of  saying  so,  he  imagines  that  God  chose  to 
make  the  earth  out  of  the  most  impossible  materials,  by  the 
most  unsuitable  agencies,  and  with  the  most  inadequate 
forces;  and  that  therefore  a  long  time  was  needed  for  the 
work.  In  short,  to  revert  to  our  illustration  of  the  house- 
building, he  supposes  that  Almighty  God  built  the  earth 
with  the  ox-team,  and  employed  only  the  same   force   in 


*  See  the  possibility  of  such  a  source  of  volcanic  action,  of  such 
a  formation  of  plutonic  rooks,  proved  by  Lyell.  Principles^  chaps. 
XXXII.  and  XII. 


496  SCIENCE,    OH   FAITH? 

erecting  the  building,  which  he  now  uses  for  doing  little 
jobbing  repairs.  Almost  all  geological  computations  of  time 
are  made  upon  the  supposition  that  only  the  same  agents 
were  at  work  then  which  we  see  now,  that  they  only  wrought 
with  the  same  degree  of  force,  and  that  they  produced  just 
the  same  effects  in  such  a  widely  different  condition  of  the 
earth  as  then  prevailed.  It  takes  a  year  say  to  deposit  mud 
enough  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea  to  make  an  inch  of  rock 
now;  and  if  mud  was  deposited  no  faster  when  the  geolog- 
ical strata  were  formed,  they  are  as  many  years  old  as  there 
are  inc  hes  in  eight  or  nine  miles  depth  of  strata.  But  this 
is  not  the  sientific  proof  we  were  promised.  How  does  he 
prove  that  mud  was  deposited  at  just  the  same  rate  then  as 
now?  The  very  utmost  he  can  say  is  that  it  is  a  very  prob- 
able supposition.  I  can  prove  it  a  very  improbable  suppo- 
sition. But  it  is  enough  for  my  present  purpose  to  point 
out  that,  probable  or  improbable,  it  is  onl?/  supposition.  No 
proof  is  given  or  can  possibly  be  given  for  it.  Any  conclu- 
sion drawn  from  such  premises  can  be  only  a  supposition  too. 
And  so  the  whole  fabric  of  geological  chronology,  upon  the 
stability  of  which  so  many  Infidels  are  risking  the  salvation 
of  their  souls,  and  beneath  which  they  are  boasting  that  they 
will  bury  the  Bible  beyond  the  possibility  of  a  resurrection, 
vanishes  into  a  mere  unproved  notion^  based  upon  an  if. 

It  is  truly  astonishing,  that  any  sober-minded  person 
should  allow  himself  to  be  shaken  in  his  religious  convic- 
tions by  the  alleged  results  of  a  science  so  unformed  and 
imperfect,  as  geologists  themselves  acknowledge  their  favor- 
ite science  to  be.  "  The  dry  land  upon  our  globe  occupies 
only  one-fourth  of  its  whole  superficies.  All  the  rest  is  sea. 
How  much  of  this  fourth  part  have  geologists  been  able  to 
examine?  and  how  small  seems  to  be  the  area  of  stratifica- 
tion which  they  have  explored  ?     We  venture  to  say  not  one 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  497 

fiftieth  part  of  the  whoje.'^^^  "Abstract  or  speculative  geol- 
ogy, were  it  a  perfect  science,  would  present  a  history  of 
the  globe  from  its  origin  and  formation,  through  all  the 
changes  it  has  undergone,  up  to  the  present  time ;  describ- 
ing its  external  appearance,  its  plants  and  animals  at  each 
successive  period.  As  yet,  geology  is  the  mere  aim  to  arrive 
at  such  knowledge;  and  when  we  consider  how  difficult  it  is 
to  trace  the  history  of  a  nation,  even  over  a  few  centuries, 
we  can  not  be  surprised  at  the  small  progress  geologists  have 
made  in  tracing  the  history  of  the  earth  through  tho  lapse 
of  ages.  To  ascertain  the  history  of  a  nation  possessed  of 
written  records  is  comparatively  easy ;  but  when  these  are 
wanting,  we  must  examine  the  ruins  of  their  cities  and  mon- 
uments, and  judge  of  them  as  a  people  from  the  size  and 
structure  of  their  buildings,  and  from  the  remains  of  art 
found  in  them.  This  is  often  a  perplexing,  always  an  ardu- 
ous task  ;  much  more  so  is  it  to  decipher  the  earth's  history.^'f 
''The  canoes,  for  example,  and  stone  hatchets  found  in  our 
peat  bogs  afford  an  insight  into  the  rude  arts  and  manners 
of  the  earliest  inhabitants  of  our  island;  the  buried  coin 
fixes  the  date  of  some  Roman  emperor;  the  ancient  en- 
campments indicate  the  districts  once  occupied  by  invad- 
ing armies,  and  the  former  method  of  constructing  military 
defenses;  the  Egyptiam  mummies  throw  light  on  the  art  of 
embalming,  the  rites  of  sepulture,  or  the  average  stature  of 
ancient  Egypt.  This  class  of  memorials  yields  to  no  other 
in  authenticity,  but  it  constitutes  a  small  part  only  of  the 
resources  on  which  the  historian  relies;  whereas  in  geology 
it  forms  the  only  kind  of  evidence  which  is  at  our  command. 
For  this  reason  we  must  not  expect  to  ohtain  a  full  and  con- 
nected account  of  any  series  of  events  beyond  the  reach  of 


*  Sir  David  Brewster,  K.  H.,  D.  C.  L.,  F.  R.  S.,  More  Worlds  than 
One,  p.  56. 
f  Rudiments  of  Geology,  W.  &  R.  Chambers,  p.  10. 
32 


498  SCIENCE,    OR    FAITH  ? 

history.'"^  "  There  are  no  calculations  more  doubtful  than 
those  of  the  geologist. ''f  In  fact,  no  truly  scientific  geolo- 
gist pretends  that  it  stands  on  the  same  level  with  any  au- 
thentic history,  much  less  with  the  Bible  record;  inasmuch 
as  the  discovery  of  a  single  new  fact  may  overturn  the  whole 
theory.  "It  furnishes  us  with  no  clew  by  which  to  unravel 
the  unapproachable  mysteries  of  creation  These  mysteries 
belong  to  the  wondrous  Creator,  and  to  him  only.  We  at- 
tempt to  theorize  upon  them,  and  to  reduce  them  to  law, 
and  all  nature  rises  up  against  us  in  our  presumptuous  re- 
bellion. A  stray  splinter  of  cone  bearing  wood — a  fish's 
skull  or  tooth — the  vertebra  of  a  reptile — the  humerus  of  a 
bird — the  jaw  of  a  quadruped — all,  any  of  these  things, 
weak  and  insignificant  as  they  may  seem,  become  in  such  a 
quarrel  too  strong  for  us  and  our  theory — the  puny  i'rag- 
ment  in  the  grasp  of  truth  forms  as  irresistible  a  weapon  as 
the  dry  bone  did  in  that  of  Samson  of  old ;  and  our  slaugh- 
tered sophisms  lie  piled  up,  'heaps  upon  heaps,'  before  it."J 
The  history  of  the  progress  of  geology  furnishes  abundant 
proof  of  the  truth  of  these  admissions  of  weakness  and  fal- 
libility. In  almost  every  instance  when  we  have  had  the 
opportunity  of  testing  geological  calculations  of  time  they 
have  proved  to  be  erroneous;  and  sometimes  grossly  erro- 
neous. The  lake  dwellings  of  Switzerland,  which  were  once 
alleged  to  be  at  least  fifteen  thousand  years  old,  are  found 
surrounded  by  heaps  of  burnt  corn;  illustrating  Caesar's 
account  of  the  burning  of  their  corn  by  the  Helvetians, 
preparatory  to  the  invasion  of  Gaul,  which  he  repelled.  The 
peat  bogs  of  Denmark,  surrounding  stumps  of  oak,  beech, 
and  pine,  claimed  to  be  successive  growths,  and  at  least 
twelve  thousand  five  hundred  years  old,  have  been  compared 


*  Lyell's  Principles  of  Oeotogy,  p.  3. 

f  Miller,  Old  Red  Sandstone,  p.  25. 

X  Hugh  Miller,  Footprints  of  the  Creator,  p.  313. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  499 

with  a  piece  of  primeval  bog  and  forest,  on  the  Earl  of 
Arran's  estate,  in  Scotland,  which  corresponds  perfectly  to 
the  Danish  bog;  but  which  shows  the  three  growths  not 
successive,  but  contemporaneous,  at  diflPerent  levels;  the 
bog  growing  as  well  as  the  trees.  And  the  frequent  discovery 
of  Danish  remains  of  the  stone  and  bronze  ages  in  the  old 
Danish  forts  and  battle-fields  of  Ireland  fixes  their  histor- 
ical period  at  the  era  of  the  Danish  invasion ;  some  of  these 
stone  and  bronze  weapons  being  found  on  the  battle-field  of 
Cbntarf,  dating  A.  D.  827.  Skeletons  of  warriors  with 
gold  collars,  bronze  battle-axes,  and  flint  arrow  heads  are 
quite  common  in  the  Irish  bogs.  The  absence  of  iron,  on 
which  so  great  a  theory  of  the  stone,  bronze,  and  iron  ages 
as  successive  developments  of  civilization  has  been  raised, 
is  easily  accounted  for  by  the  perishable  nature  of  iron 
when  exposed  to  moisture.  But  that  this  Celtic  race  used 
iron  also,  as  well  as  bronze  and  stone,  is  proved  incontestably 
by  the  discovery,  in  1863,  of  the  slag  of  their  iron  furnaces, 
among  a  number  of  flint  weapons,  and  Celtic  skulls,  at  Lin- 
hope,  in  Northumberland;  the  iron  itself  having  perished 
by  rust*  The  pottery,  glass,  and  handmills  found  beside 
these  skulls  show  that  their  owners  were  by  no  means  the 
degraded  savages  supposed  to  represent  the  so-called  stone 
age. 

Horner's  Nile  pottery  discovered  at  a  depth  of  sixty  feet, 
and  calculated  to  be  twelve  thousand  years  old,  and  frag- 
ments found  still  deeper  in  this  deposit,  and  calculated  at 
thirty  thousand  years,  were  found  to  be  underlaid  by  still 
deeper  layers,  producing  Roman  pottery;  and  in  the  deep- 
est boring  of  all,  at  the  foot  of  the  statue  of  Rameses  II. 
the  discovery  of  the  Grecian  honeysuckle,  marked  on  some 
of  these  mysterious  fragments,  which  they  had  claimed  as 


*  American  Cyclopaedia,  1833,  p.  374.     Annual  of  Scientific  Dis- 
covery, 1861,  p.  351. 


500  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 


pre-historic,  proved  that  it  could  not  be  older  than  the 
Greek  conquest  of  Egypt.  Sir  Robert  Stephenson  found 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Daniietta,  at  a  greater  depth  than 
Mr.  Horner  reached,  a  brick  bearing  the  stamp  of  Moham- 
med Ali.'!^  The  shiftinoj  currents  of  all  rivers  flowinj? 
through  alluvial  deposits  bury  such  things  in  a  single  sea- 
son of  high  water. 

The  raised  beaches  of  Scotland  are  quite  conspicuous 
geological  features  of  the  Highlands,  and  have  furnished 
themes  for  calculations  of  their  vast  antiquity.  Here  and 
there  human  remains  had  been  discovered  in  them,  but  no 
link  could  be  had  to  connect  them  otherwise  than  geologic- 
ally with  history.  Geologists,  accordingly,  with  their  usual 
generosity  of  time,  assigned  them  to  the  pre- Adamite  period. 
But  recently  the  missing  link  has  been  found,  and  these 
progenitors  of  Tubal  Cain,  and  the  pre-Adamites  generally, 
are  found  to  have  been  in  the  habit  of  supping  their  broth 
out  of  Roman  pottery ! 

Lyell,  the  acknowledged  prince  of  geologists,  is  famous 
for  his  chronological  blundering;  of  which  his  calculations 
of  the  age  of  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi  is  a  very  good 
American  example.  He  calculates  the  quantity  of  mud  in 
suspension  in  the  water,  and  the  area  and  depth  of  the  delta, 
and  says  it  must  have  taken  sixty  seven  thousand  years  for 
the  formation  of  the  whole ;  and  if  the  alluvial  matter  of 
the  plain  above  be  two  hundred  and  sixty-four  feet  deep,  or 
half  that  of  the  delta,  it  must  have  required  thirty-three 
thousand  five  hundred  years  more  for  its  accumulation,  even 
if  its  area  be  estimated  at  only  equal  to  the  delta,  whereas 
it  is  in  fact  larger.f  He  makes  no  allowance  for  tidal  de- 
posits. 

But  Brig.  Gen.  Humphrey,  of  the  United  States  Surveying 


*  London  Quarterly  Review,  18G6,  No.  51,  p.  240. 
t  LycU's  Second  Visit  to  the  United  States. 


SCIENCE,   OR  FAITH?  501 

Department,  goes  over  Lyell's  calculations,  and  shows  that 
instead  of  3,702,758,400  cubic  feet  of  mud  brought  down 
by  the  Mississippi,  as  estimated  by  Lyell,  the  actual  amount 
is  19,500,750,000,000;  that  the  rate  at  which  the  delta  is 
now  advancing  into  the  gulf  is  filty  feet  per  annum,  and 
that  the  age  of  the  delta  and  alluvial  deposit  is  four  thou- 
sand four  hundred,  instead  of  Lyell's  one  hundred  thousand 
five  hundred  years  -^  We  might  go  on  and  give  a  dozen 
such  instances  of  geological  miscalculations  of  time  did 
space  permit;  but  these,  are  enough  to  disabuse  us  of  any 
faith  in  such  calculations. 

With  such  specimens  before  us  of  the  miscalculations  of 
the  smaller  periods  by  geologists,  we  are  not  surprised  to 
find  that  they  grossly  exaggerate  the  larger  cycles  of  time. 
The  necessities  of  the  evolution  of  the  ascidian  into  the 
snail,  of  the  snail  into  the  fish,  and  of  the  fish  into  the  liz- 
ard, of  the  lizard  into  the  monkey,  and  of  the  monkey  into 
the  man,  by  slow  and  imperceptible  changes,  demanded  an 
almost  infinite  length  of  time;  and  the  geologists  of  that 
school  accordingly  asserted  the  existence  of  animal  life 
upon  our  globe  for  hundreds  of  thousands  of  millions  of 
years. 

But  Sir  Wm.  Thompson,  one  of  the  first  mathematicians,, 
demonstratesf  the  impossibility  of  any  such  length  of  time 
being  spent  in  the  process  of  cooling  our  little  globe  Be- 
ginning with  their  own  assumption,  of  a  globe  of  molten 
granite  cooling  down  to  the  present  state,  he  proves  that 
the  earth  can  not  have  been  in  existence  longer  than  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  years;  and  of  course  that  plants  and  ani- 
mals have  existed  on  it  a  much  shorter  time;  as  for  the 
greater  part  of  that  period  it  was  too  hot  for  them.  The 
geologists  are  now  becoming  ashamed  of  their  poetical  cycles, 


*  The  Advance,  Chicago,  May  28,  1868. 
f  Geological  Time.^ 


502  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

and  some  acknowledge  that  their  chiefs  blundered  egregi- 
ously  in  their  calculations. 

The  principles  of  geology  seem  to  be  as  unsettled  as  its 
facts.  There  is  no  agreement  upon  any  of  its  theories.  The 
history  of  its  theories,  like  that  of  their  framers,  begins 
with  their  birth,  and  ends  with  their  burial.  Each  new 
theory  placed  the  tombstone  upon  the  preceding,  and  in- 
scribed it  with  the  brief  record  of  the  antediluvian,  ''and 
he  died."  A  busy  time  they  must  have  had  with  their 
Wernerian,  Iluttonian,  and  Diluvian  hypotheses;  not  to 
mention  the  Hutchinsonian  theory,  the  animal  spirits  flow- 
ing from  the  sun,  the  vegetative  power  of  stones,  and  other 
sage  and  serious  facts  and  theories,  theological  and  philoso- 
phical, invented  to  account  for  the  world's  creation.  ''  No 
theory,"  says  Lyell,  ''could  be  so  far-fetched  or  fantastical 
as  not  to  attract  some  followers,  provided  it  fell  in  with  the 
popular  notion."  "Some  of  the  most  extravagant  systems 
wer^  invented  or  controverted  by  men  of  acknowledged 
talent."  A  more  amusing  exhibition  of  philosophical  ab- 
surdity can  not  be  found  than  those  chapters  which  he  de- 
votes to  "The  Historical  Progress  of  Geology,"*  unless 
perhaps  the  scientific  discussions  of  the  erudite  acquaint- 
ances of  Lemuel  Gulliver. 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  the  progress  of  inductive 
science,  and  the  prevalence  of  the  Baconian  philosophy 
have  banished  absurdities  and  contradictions  from  the  sphere 
of  geolo'ry.  It  would  require  a  man  of  considerable  learn- 
ing to  find  three  geologists  agreed,  either  in  their  facts,  or 
in  their  theories.  In  a  general  way,  indeed,  we  have  the 
Catastrophists,  with  Hugh  Miller,  overwhelming  the  earth 
with  dire  convulsions  in  the  geological  eras,  and  upheaving 
the  more  conservative  Lyell  and  the  Progressionists;  who 
affirm  that  all  things  continue  as  they  were  from  the  begin- 


*  Principles,  Chaps.  III.  and  IV. 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  503 

ning  of  the  world.  And  there  is  perhaps  a  general  agree- 
ment now  that  the  underlying  primjVi'ye  rocks,  so  called, 
are  not  primitive  at  all,  as  geologists  thought  twenty  years 
ago;  but,  like  the  foundations  of  a  Chicago  house,  have  been 
put  in  long  after  the  building  was  finished  and  occupied. 
But  then  comes  the  question  how  they  were  inserted — 
whether  as  Elie  de  Beaumont  thinks,  the  mountains  were 
upheaved  by  starts,  lever  fashion,  or,  as  Lyell  affirms,  very 
gradually,  and  imperceptibly,  like  the  elevation  of  a  brick 
house  by  screws  *  Nor  is  there  the  least  likelihood  of  any 
future  agreement  among  them ;  inasmuch  as  they  can  not 
agree  either  as  to  the  thickness  of  the  earth's  solid  crust 
which  is  to  be  lifted,  or  the  force  by  which  it  is  to  be  done? 
Hopkins  proves  by  astronomical  observation  that  it  is  eight 
hundred  miles  thick.  Lyell  affirms  that  at  twenty-four 
miles  deep  there  can  be  no  solid  crust,  for  the  temperature 
of  the  earth  increases  one  degree  for  every  forty-five  feet, 
and  at  that  depth  the  heat  is  great  enough  to  melt  iron  and 
almost  every  known  substance.  But  then  there  is  a  differ- 
ence between  philosophers  about  this  last  test  of  solidity — 
those  who  believe  in  Wedgewood's  Pyrometer,  which  was 
the  infallible  standard  twenfy  years  ago,  asserting  that  the 
heat  of  melted  iron  is  21,000°  Fahrenheit;  while  Professor 
Daniells  demonstrates  by  another  infallible  instrument  that 
it  is  only  2,786°  Fahrenheit ;f  which  is  rather  a  difi"crence. 
In  one  case  the  earth's  crust  would  be  over  two  hifti;lred 
miles  thick,  in  the  other  twenty-four.  But  then  comes  the 
great  question.  What  is  below  the  granite?  and  a  very  im- 
portant one  for  any  theory  of  the  earth. "  It  evidently  un- 
derlies the  whole  foundation  of  speculative  geology,  whether 
we  assume  with  De  Beaumont  and  Humboldt,  that  "the 
whole  globe,  with  the  exception  of  a  thin  envelope,  much 

*  Principles^  chap.  XI. 
f  Principles,  p.  530. 


504  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

thinner  in  proportion  than  the  shell  of  an  egg,  is  a  fused 
mass,  kept  fluid  by  heat — a  heat  of  450,000°  Fahrenheit,  at 
the  center,  Cordier  calculates — but  constantly  cooling,  and 
contracting  its  dimensions;"  and  occasionally  cracking  and 
lialling  in,  and  "squeezing  upward  large  portions  of  the 
mass;"  '  thus  producing  those  folds  or  wrinkles  which  we 
call  mountain  chains;"  or,  with  Davy  and  Lyell,  that  the 
heat  of  such  a  boiling  ocean  below  would  melt  the  solid 
crust,  like  ice  from  the  surface  of  boiling  water— and  with 
it  the  whole  theory  of  the  primeval  existence  of  the  earth 
in  a  state  of  igneous  fusion,  its  gradual  cooling  down  into 
continents  and  mountains  of  granite,  the  gradual  abrasion 
of  the  granite  into  the  mud  and  sand  which  formed  the 
stratified  rocks,  and  all  the  other  brilliant  hypotheses  which 
have  sparked  out  of  this  great  internal  fire.  Instead  of  an 
original  central  heat  he  supposes  that  "  we  may  perhaps  re- 
fer the  heat  of  the  interior  to  chemical  changes  constantly 
going  on  in  the  earth's  crust. "^  Now  if  the  very  founda- 
tions of  the  science  are  in  such  a  state  of  fusion,  and  float- 
ing on  a  perhaps,  would  it  not  be  wise  to  allow  them  to 
solidi.'y  a  little  before  a  man  risks  the  salvation  of  his  soul 
upon  them? 

The  various  theories  are  contradictions.  The  igneous 
theory  assault  the  aqueous  theory  with  the  greatest  heat; 
while  the  aqueous  theorists  pour  cold  water,  in  torrents, 
upon  the  igneous  men.  The  shocks  of  conflicting  glaJer 
theories  have  shaken  the  Alps  and  convulsed  all  North 
Ameri  a;  and  have  not  yet  ceased.  There  are  eleven  the 
cries  of  earthquakes,  which  have  been,  and  are  still,  sucl 
energetic  acijente  in  geology;  and  the  whole  eleven  afford 
not  the  least  rational  idea  of  their  causes ;  nor  of  any  means 
of  preventing,  predicting,  or  escaping  their  ravages.  The 
best  geologists  have  described  fossil  tracks  as  the  footprints 

*  PrineipleAf  chap.  XXXI. 


SCIENCE,    OR    FAITH?  505 

of  gigantic  birds,  which  others  equally  as  authoritative  pro  • 
nounce  the  tracks  of  frogs  and  lizards.  Indeed,  a  good 
part  of  every  geological  treatise,  and  of  the  time  of  every 
association  of  geologists,  is  taken  up  with  refutations  of  the 
errors  of  their  predecessors. 

There  are  no  les3  than  nine  theories  of  the  causes  of  the 
elevation  of  mountains;  some  scoop  out  the  valleys  by 
water;  others  by  ice;  others  heave  up  the  mountains  by 
fire;  and  some  by  the  chemical  expansion  of  their  rocks; 
while  others  still  upheave  them  by  the  pressure  of  molten 
lava  from  beneath ;  and  others  again  make  them  out  to  be 
the  wrinkles  of  the  contraction  of  the  supposed  crust  of 
the  liquid  interior.  Of  all  these  theories  an  able  geologist 
says:  "The  many  proposed  theories  of  mountain  elevation 
are  based  upon  assumptions  which  unfortunately  are  not 
true;  but  that  is  an  unimportant  matter  to  the  majority  of 
our  speculating  geologists;  and  one  never  seen  by  the  in- 
ventors ot  the  theories,  who  allow  themselves  to  be  led  cap- 
tive by  a  poetic  imagination,  instead  of  building  their  in- 
ductions upon  field  observations. 

"  Thus,  to  suppose  that  mountains  are  elevated  by  a  wedge 
like  intrusion  of  melted  matter  is  to  give  to  a  fluid  func- 
tions incompatible  with  its  dynamic  properties.  So  also  the 
supposition  that  the  igneous  rocks  were  intruded,  as  solid 
wedges  separating  and  liiting  the  crust,  is  opposed  to  the 
fact  that  no  apparent  abrasion,  but  generally  the  closest 
adhesion,  exists  at  the  line  of  contact  of  the  igneous  and 
stratified  rocks.  Equally  fatal  objections  may  be  advanced 
against  the  other  theories."* 

Multitudes  of  the  alleged  facts  of  Infidel  geologists  are 
as  apocryphal  as  their  theories.  Thus  in  a  recent  ponder- 
ous quarto  volume,  the  production  of  half  a  dozen  philoso- 
phers, this  identical  impossible  theory — of  the  cooling  of 


*  Chambers'  Cyclopaedia  Art.    Appalachians. 


506  SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH? 

the  earth's  crust  down  to  solidity,  while  an  irre;dstible  cen- 
tral heat  remains  below — is  presented  to  the  world  as  an 
ascertained  fact;  we  are  informed  of  the  discovery  of  a 
human  skull  fifty-seven  thousand  years  old,  in  good  preser- 
vation; asked  to  believe  that  two  tiers  of  cypress  snags 
could  not  be  deposited  in  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi  in  less 
than  eleven  thousand  four  hundred  years;  and  to  calculate 
that  the  delta  of  the  Nile  must  have  been  a  great  many  ages 
in  growing  to  its  present  size,  because  it  is  quite  certain 
that  for  the  last  three  thousand  years  it  has  never  grown  at 

It  were  easy  to  fill  a  volume  with  such  mistakes  of  geolo- 
gists, but  my  limits  restrict  me  to  a  few  specimens.  Silli- 
man's  Journal,  in  a  review  of  "  The  Geology  of  North  Amer- 
ica^ by  Julius  Marcoe,  U.  S.  Geologist,  and  Professor  of 
Geology  in  the  Federal  Polytechnic  School  of  Switzerland ; 
quarto,  with  maps  and  plates,"  says: 

"The  author  describes  the  mountain  systems  of  north 
America  am  he  supposes  they  must  he,  according  to  the  theo- 
retical views  of  Elie  de  Beaumont."  "Thus  one  single 
fossil — that  one  a  species  of  pine,  and  only  very  much  re- 
sembling the  Pinltes  Fleiirotti  of  Dr.  Monguett — establishes 
a  connection  between  the  New  Red  of  France,  and  that 
of  America  This  is  a  very  strong  word  for  a  geologist  to 
use  on  evidence  so  small,  and  so  uncertain,  with  the  fate  of 
four  thousand  or  five  thousand  feet  of  rock  at  stake,  and 
the  beds  beneath,  containing  'perhaps  Belemnites.'  The 
prudent  observer  would  have  said,  establishes  nothing;  and 
such  is  the  fact"  "Oji  such  evidence  a  region  over  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  which  is  one  thousand  miles  from  north 
to  south,  and  eight  hundred  miles  from  east  to  west,  is  for 
the  most  part  colored  in  the  maps  as  Triassic.  Such  a  re- 
gion would  take  in  quite  a  respectable  part  of  the  continent 


Tvpcs  of  Mankind,  329,  335,  338. 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  507 

of  Europe."  ""We  now  know  beyond  any  reasonable  doubt, 
that  all  the  country  from  the  Platte  to  the  British  Posses- 
sions, and  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Black  Hills,  is  occu- 
pied by  Cretaceous  and  Tertiary  rocks.  And  as  regards 
the  region  from  the  Platte  southward  to  the  Red  lliver, 
very  far  the  largest  part  is  known  to  he  not  Triassic,  while  it 
is  possible  the  Trias  may  occur  in  some  parts  of  it."  "It 
is  unfortunate  in  its  bearing  on  the  progress  of  geological 
science  to  have  false  views  about  some  five  hundred  thou- 
sand miles  of  territory,  and  much  more  besides,  spread  widely 
abroad  through  respectable  journals,  and  transactions  of*  dis- 
tinguished European  Societies.^ 

One  can  not  but  sympathize  with  the  poor  abused  Bocky 
Mountains,  tormented  and  misrepresented  for  a  thousand 
miles  by  this  French  geologist.  But  our  American  patriotism 
may  be  partially  pacified  when  we  find  that  Europe  fares  no 
better;  and  that  Great  Britain,  and  Old  Scotland,  Hugh 
Miller's  own  cradle,  which  has  been  the  very  lecture  room 
of  geologists,  has  nevertheless  been  most  grossly  misrepre- 
sented in  all  books  and  maps,  up  till  the  last  decade.  The 
Edinhurgh  Revieio,  a  competent  authority,  says  (No.  cxxvii.)  : 
"  The  new  light  which  has  been  thus  thrown  on  the  history 
of  the  geological  series  of  Scotland  (by  Sir  Boderick  Mur- 
chison),  showing  that  great  masses  of  crystalline  rocks, 
called  primary,  and  supposed  to  be  much  more  ancient  than 
the  Silurian  system,  are  here  simply  metamorphosed  strata 
of  that  age,  may  with  justice  be  looked  upon  as  one  of  the 
most  valuable  results  which  have  been  attained  by  British 
geologists  for  many  years."  A  very  just  remark  indeed! 
If  only  geologists  would  learn  a  little  modesty  from  this 
discovery,  which  completely  turns  upside  down  their  old 
world-building  process  of  grinding  down  all  the  upper  strata 


*  The  American  Journal  of  Science  and  Art,  edited  by  Profs. 
Silliman  and  Dana,  XXVI.  235,  300. 


508  SCIENCE,    Oil   FAITH? 

out  of  the  molten  granite,  and  gives  us,  instead,  the  baking 
of  the  strata  into  crystalline  rocks ;  a  process  exactly  the  re- 
verse of  the  former,  and  of  that  asserted  by  the  theory  of 
evolution.  There  is  no  prospect  of  any  cessation  of  the 
war  of  geological  theories. 

4.   Zoology. 

Equally  hostile  to  each  other  are  the  expounders  of  the 
development  of  man  from  the  monkey.  As  Ishmaelites 
their  hand  is  against  every  man.  Each  is  a  law  in  theoriz- 
ing unto  himself  Their  contendings  may  well  teach  us 
caution.  Lamarck  set  those  right  who  preceded  him  The 
author  of  the  Vestiges  of  Creation  outstripped  Lamarck, 
and  Mr.  Darwin  sets  both  aside ;  while  he  in  his  turn  is  se- 
verely censured  by  M.  Tremaux,  and  has  all  his  reasoning 
controverted  in  favor  of  the  new  theory.  Lamarck  believed 
in  spontaneous  generation ;  Darwin  does  not.  The  author 
of  the  Vestiges  of'  Creation  expounded  a  law  of  develop- 
ment, and  Mr.  Darwin  replaces  it  by  Natural  Selection.  M. 
Tremaux  has  repudiated  the  origin  which  Mr.  Darwin  has 
assumed,  and  insists  on  our  believing  that,  not  water,  but 
the  soil,  is  the  origin  of  all  life,  and  therefore  of  man.  With 
him  there  is  no  progress ;  all  creatures  have  reached  their 
resting  place.  But  man  rises  or  sinks,  according  to  the 
more  ancient  or  recent  soil  he  dwells  upon.  Professor 
Huxley  is  unwilling  to  abandon  his  idea  that  life  may  come 
from  dead  matter,  and  is  not  disposed  to  accept  of  Mr.  Dar- 
win's explanation  of  the  origin  of  life  by  the  Creator  hav- 
ing, at  first,  breathed  it  into  one  or  more  forms.  While 
accepting  of  Mr  Darwin's  theory  of  a  common  descent  for 
man  with  all  other  creatures,  he  not  only  differs  from  him 
as  to  the  beginning,  but  he  admits  that  there  is  no  gradual 
transition  from  the  one  to  the  other.  He  acknowledges  that 
the  structural  differences  between  man  and  even  the  high- 
est apes  are  great  and  significant;  and  yet  because  there  is 
no  sign  of  gradual  transitiou  between  the  gorilla,  and  the 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  509 


orang,  and  the  gibbon,  he  infers  that  they  all  had  a  common 
origin ;  whereas  the  more  natural  conclusion  from  the  facts 
would  be  that  they  had  separate  beginnings  Mr.  Wallace, 
whose  claims  are  admitted  to  be  equal  to  these  of  Mr.  Darwin, 
as  the  propounder  of  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  species  by 
Natural  Selection,  has  firmly  asserted  that,  with  all  its  re- 
sources, Natural  Selection  is  utterly  inadequate  to  account  for 
the  origin  and  structure  of  the  human  race.*  Thus  they  go, 
biting  and  devouring  each  other,  until  at  last  it  becomes  a 
reproduction  of  the  Kilkenny  cats,  and  there  is  nothing 
left  but  the  tails.  We  have  only  to  wait,  and  the  current 
Infidel  theory  will  certainly  be  exposed  and  demolished  next 
year,  by  the  author  of  some  equally  impossible  theory. 

Not  merely  individual  scientists,  but  the  most  learned 
societies  have  blundered.  "  Has  not  the  French  Academy 
pronounced  against  the  use  of  quinine  and  vaccination, 
against  lightning  rods  and  steam  engines?  Has  not  Reau- 
mer  suppressed  Peysonnel's  '  Essay  on  Corals,'  because  he 
thought  it  was  madness  to  maintain  their  animal  nature? 
Had  not  his  learned  brethren  decreed,  in  1802,  that  there 
were  no  meteors,  although  a  short  time  later  two  thousand 
fell  in  one  department  alone ;  and  had  they  not  more  recently 
still  received  the  news  of  ether  being  useful  as  an  anaesthetic 
with  sure  and  unanimous  condemnation  ?"f 

If  space  permitted  we  could  go  over  the  circle  of  the 
sciences,  and  show  that  a  similar  state  of  uncertainty  and 
exposure  to  error  exists  in  them  all.  We  have,  however, 
confined  our  attention  to  those  whose  certainty  is  now  most 
loudly  vaunted,  and  whose  theories  are  most  largely  used  as 
the  basis  of  Infidelity.  Nor  have  we  by  any  means  ex- 
hausted the  list  of  errors  ^nd  contradictions  of  these.  A 
volume  as  large  as  this  would  be  required  to  present  the 


*  Frazer — Blending  Lights,  p.  113. 
f  De  Vore's  Modem  Maffie,  68. 


510  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

list  of  several  hundred  errors,  absurdities,  contradictions, 
and  mutual  refutations  of  scientists,  in  the  physical  sciences, 
now  before  me;  errors  not  sought  after,  but  incidentally 
observed,  and  noted  in  the  spare  hours'  reading  of  a  busy 
professional  life. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice,  that  the  uncertainties  of  science 
increase  just  in  proportion  to  our  interest  in  it.  It  is  very 
uncertain  about  all  my  dearest  concerns,  and  very  positive 
about  what  does  not  concern  me  The  greatest  certainty  is 
attainable  in  pure  mathematics,  which  regards  only  ideal 
quantities  and  figures;  but  biology — the  science  of  Hie — is 
utterly  obscure.  The  astronomer  can  calculate  with  con- 
siderable accuracy  the  movements  of  distant  planets,  with 
which  we  have  no  intercourse;  but  where  is  the  meteorolo- 
gist bold  enough  to  predict  the  wind  and  weather  of  next 
week,  on  which  my  crops,  my  ships,  my  life  may  depend? 
Heat,  light,  and  electricity  may  be  pretty  accurately  meas- 
ured and  registered,  but  what  physician  can  measure  the 
strength  of  the  malignant  virus  which  is  sapping  the  life  of 
his  patient?  The  chemist  can  thoroughly  analyze  any  for- 
eign substance,  but  the  disease  of  his  own  body  which  is 
bringing  him  to  the  grave,  he  can  neither  weigh,  measure 
nor  remove.  Science  is  very  positive  about  distant  stars 
and  remote  ages,  but  stammers  and  hesitates  about  the  very 
life  of  its  professors. 

4.  Such,  then,  are  a  few  of  the  uncertainties,  imperfec- 
tions, and  positive  and  egregious  errors  of  science  at  its 
fountain  head.  To  the  actual  investigator  infallible  cer- 
tainty of  any  scientific  fact  is  hardly  possible,  error  exceed- 
ingly probable,  and  gross  blunders  in  fact  and  theory  by  no 
means  uncommon.  But  how  greatly  diluted  must  the  modi- 
fied and  hesitating  conviction  possible  to  an  actual  observer  ^ 
become,  when,  as  is  generally  the  case,  a  man  is  not  an  - 
actual  observer  himself,  but  learns  his  science  at  school. 
Such  a  person  leaves  the  ground  of  demonstrative  science, 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  511 

and  stands  upon  faitli.  The  first  question  tlien  to  he  pro- 
posed to  one  whose  demonstrative  certainty  of  the  truths 
of  physical  science  has  disgusted  him  with  a  religion  re- 
ceived on  testimony  and  -faith,  is.  How  have  you  reached 
this  demonstrative  certainty  in  matters  of  science?  Are 
you  quite  sure  that  your  certainty  rests  not  upon  the  tes- 
timony of  fallible  and  erring  philosophers,  but  solely  upon 
your  own  personal  observations  and  experiments  ? 

To  take  only  the  initial  standard  of  astronomical  meas- 
urements— the  earth's  distance  from  the  sun  Have  you 
personally  measured  the  earth's  radius,  observed  the  transit 
of  Venus  in  1769^  from  Lapland  to  Tahiti  at  the  same  time, 
calculated  the  sun's  parallax,  and  the  eccentricity  of  the 
earth's  orbit?  Would  you  profess  yourself  competent  to 
take  even  the  preliminary  observation  for  fixing  the  instru- 
ments for  such  a  reckoning?  Were  you  ever  within  a 
thousand  miles  of  the  proper  positions  for  making  such  ob- 
servations ?  Or  have  you  been  necessitated  to  accept  this 
primary  measure,  upon  the  accuracy  of  which  all  subsequent 
astronomical  measurers  depend,  merely  upon  hearsay  and 
testimony,  and  subject  to  all  those  contingencies  of  error 
and  prejudice,  and  mistakes  of  copyists,  which,  in  your 
opinion,  render  the  Bible  so  unreliable  in  matters  of  relig- 
ion? 

Or  to  come  down  to  earth  You  are  a  student  of  the 
stone  book,  with  its  enduring  records  graven  in  the  rock 
forever ;  and  perhaps  have  satisfied  yourself  that  "  under 
the  ponderous  strata  of  geological  science  the  traditionary 
mythology  and  cosmogony  of  the  Hebrew  poet  ha ;  found 
an  everlasting  tomb."  But  how  many  volumes  of  this 
stone  book  have  you  perused  personally  ?  You  are  quite 
indignant  perhaps  that  theologians  and  divines,  who  have 
no  practical  or  personal  knowledge  of  geology,  should  pre- 
sume to  investigate  its  claims.  Have  you  personally  visited 
the  various  localities  in  South  America,  Siberia,  Australia, 


512  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

India,  Britain,  Italy,  and  the  South  Seas,  where  the  various 
formations  are  exhibited  ;  and  have  you  personally  excavated 
from  their  matrices  the  various  fossils  which  form  the  hie- 
roglyphics of  the  science  ?  Have  you,  in  fact,  ever  seen  one 
in  a  thousand  of  these  minerals  and  fossils  in  situ?  Or  are 
you  dependent  on  the  tales  of  travelers,  the  specimens  of 
collectors,  the  veracity  of  authors,  the  accuracy  of  lectu- 
rers, aided  by  maps  of  ideal  stratifications,  in  rose-pink, 
brimstone-yellow,  and  indigo-blue,  for  your  profound  and 
glowing  convictions  of  the  irresistible  force  of  experimental 
science, -and  of  the  shadowy  vagueness  of  a  religion  depend- 
ent upon  human  testimony  ? 

To  come  down  considerably  in  our  demands,  and  confine 
our.^elves  to  the  narrow  limits  of  the  laboratory.  You  are 
a  chemist  perhaps,  and  proud,  as  most  chemists  justly  are, 
of  the  accuracy  attainable  in  that  most  palpable  and  dem- 
onstrative science.  But  how  much  of  it  is  experimental 
science  to  you?  How  many  of  the  nine  hundred  and  forty- 
two  substances  treated  of  in  Turner's  Chemistry  have 
you  analyzed?  One-half?  One-tenth?  Would  you  face 
the  laughter  of  a  college  class  to  morrow  upon  the  experi- 
ment of  taking  nine  out  of  the  nine  hundred,  reducing 
them  to  their  primitive  elements,  giving  an  accurate  analysis 
of  their  component  parts,  and  combining  them  in  the  various 
forms  described  in  that,  or  any  other  book,  whose  state- 
ments, because  experimentally  certain,  have  filled  you  with 
a  dislike  of  Bible  truths,  which  you  must  receive  upon 
testimony?  In  fact,  do  you  know  anything  worth  mention 
of  the  facts  of  science  upon  your  own  knowledge,  except 
those  of  the  profession  by  which  you  make  your  living? 

Or,  after  all  your  boasting  about  scientific  and  demon- 
strative certainty,  have  you  been  obliged  to  receive  the  cer- 
tainties of  science  ''upon  faith,  and  at  second-hand,  and 
upon  the  word  of  another; "  and  to  save  your  life  you  could 
not  tell  half  the  time  who  that  other  is,  by  naming  the  dis- 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  513 


coverers  of  half  the  scientific  truths  you  believe?  What! 
arc  you  dependent  on  hearsay,  and  probability,  for  any  lit- 
tle science  you  possess,  having  in  fact  never  obtained  any 
personal  demonstration  or  experience  of  its  first  principles 
and  measurements,  nor  being  capable  of  doing  so?  Then 
let  us  hear  no  more  cant  about  the  uncertainty  of  a  religon 
dependent  upon  testimony,  and  the  certainties  of  experimental 
science.  Whatever  certainty  may  be  attainable  by  scien- 
tific men — and  we  have  seen  that  is  not  much — it  is  very 
certain  you  have  got  none  of  it.  The  very  best  you  can 
have  to  wrap  yourself  in  is  a  second-hand  assurance,  griev- 
ously torn  by  rival  schools,  and  needing  to  be  patched  every 
month  by  later  discoveries.  Your  science,  such  as  it  is, 
rests  solely  upon  faith  in  the  testimony  of  philosophers, 
often  contradictory  and  improbable,  and  always  fallible  and 
uncertain. 

5.  Nor  would  you  cease  to  be  dependent  upon  faith  could 
you  personally  make  all  the  observations  and  calculations  of 
demonstrative  science.  The  knowledge  of  these  facts  does 
not  constitute  science;  it  is  merely  the  brick  pile  containing 
the  materials  for  the  building  of  science.  Science  is  knowl- 
edge systematized.  But  if  the  parts  of  nature  were  not 
arranged  after  a  plan,  the  knowledge  of  them  could  not  be 
formed  into  a  system.  Chaos  is  unintelligible.  Our  minds 
are  so  constituted  that  we  look  for  order  and  regularity,  and 
can  not  comprehend  confusion.  We  possess  this  expecta- 
tion of  order  before  we  begin  to  learn  science,  and  without 
it  would  never  begin  the  search  after  a  system  of  knowl- 
edge. All  scientific  experiment  is  but  a  search  after  order, 
and  order  is  only  another  name  for  intelligence — for  God. 
Deprive  us  of  this  fundamental  faith  in  cause  and  effect, 
order  and  regularity — of  reason,  in  short — and  science  be- 
comes as  impossible  to  man  as  to  the  orang-outang.  All 
scic^nce,  even  in  its  first  principles,  rests  upon  faith, 
33 


514  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

Not  only  science,  reason,  also,  is  founded  upon  faith;  for 
we  can  not  prove  by  reason  the  truths  which  form  the  data 
of  reasoning.  The  intuitions  of  the  mind,  which  form  the 
postulates  necessary  to  the  first  process  of  reasoning,  are 
believed,  not  proven.  When  the  wise  fool  attempted  to 
prove  his  own  existence  by  the  celebrated  sophism,  "  I  think 
therelbre  I  exist,"  he  necessarily  postulated  his  existence 
in  order  to  prove  it.  How  did  he  know  that  there  was  an 
*'I"  to  think?  And  how  did  he  know  that  the  "I"  thought? 
Certainly  not  by  any  process  of  reasoning,  but  by  faith.  He 
believed  these  truths;  but  could  never  reason  them  into 
his  consciousness.     Faith,  then,  underlies  reason  itself. 

We  may  now  proceed  to  inquire  whether  or  not  faith, 
which  we  have  found  so  prevalent  even  among  those  who 
repudiate  it,  is  a  thing  to  be  ashamed  of;  or  if  it  be  a  suffi- 
ciently certain  and  reliable  basis  for  human  life  and  conduct. 

1.  AVe  are  met  at  the  very  outset  by  the  great  fact  that 
God  has  so  constituted  the  world  and  everything  in  it,  that 
in  all  (he  great  concerns  of  life  we  are  necessitated  to  depend 
on  faith;  without  any  possibility  of  reaching  absolute  cer- 
tainty regarding  the  result  of  any  ordinary  duty.  We  sow 
without  any  certainty  of  a  crop,  or  that  we  may  live  to  reap 
it.  We  harvest,  but  our  barns  may  be  burned  down.  We 
sell  our  property  for  bank-bills,  but  who  dare  say  they  will 
ever  be  paid  in  specie?  We  start  on  a  journey  to  a  distant 
city,  but  even  though  you  insure  your  life,  who  will  insure 
that  fire,  or  flood,  or  railroad  collision  may  not  send  you  to 
the  land  whence  there  is  no  return? 

Science  is  the  child  of  yesterday;  but  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world  men  have  lived  by  faith.  Before  science 
was  born,  Cain  tilled  his  ground  without  any  mathematical 
demonstration  that  he  should  reap  a  crop.  Abel  fed  his 
flock  without  any  scientific  certainty  that  he  should  live  to 
enjoy  its  produce;  and  Tubal  Cain  forged  axes  and  swords 
without  any  assurance  that  he  should  not  be  plundered  of 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  515 

his  wages.  All  the  experience  of  mankind  proves  that  ex- 
perimental certainty  regarding  the  most  important  business 
of  this  life  is  impossible.  By  what  process  of  philosophical 
induction  is  religion  alone  put  beyond  the  sphere  of  faith 
and  hope?  If  religious  duties  are  not  binding  on  us,  un- 
less religion  be  scientifically  demonstrated,  then  neither  are 
moral  obligations;  for  these  two  can  not  be  separated.  Is 
it  really  so,  that  none  but  scientific  men  are  bound  to  tell 
the  truth,  and  pay  their  debts;  and  that  a  person  may  not 
fear  God,  and  go  to  heaven,  unless  he  has  graduated  at  col- 
lego?  The  common  sense  of  mankind  declares  that  we  live 
by  faith,  not  by  science. 

2.  We  demand  the  knowledge  of  truths  of  which  science 
is  profoundly/  ignorant.  Science  is  but  an  outlying  nook  of 
my  farm,  which  I  may  neglect  and  yet  have  bread  to  eat. 
Faith  is  my  house  in  which  all  my  dearest  interests  are 
treasured.  Of  all  the  great  problems  and  precious  inter- 
ests which  belong  to  me  as  a  mortal  and  an  immortal,  Fci6nce 
knows  nothing.  I  ask  her  whence  I  came?  and  she  points 
to  her  pinions  scorched  over  the  abyss  of  primeval  fire,  her 
eyes  blinded  by  its  awful  glare,  and  remains  silent  I  in- 
quire what  I  am?  but  the  strange  and  questioning  /  is  a 
mystery  which  she  can  neither  analyze  nor  measure.  I  tell 
her  of  the  voice  of  conscience  within  me — she  never  heard 
it,  and  does  not  pretend  to  understand  its  oracles.  I  tell 
her  of  my  anxieties  about  the  future — she  is  learned  only 
in  the  past.  I  inquire  how  I  may  be  happy  hereafter — but 
happiness  is  not  a  scientific  term,  and  she  can  not  tell  me 
how  to  be  happy  here !     Poor,  blind  science ! 

3.  All  our  dearest  interests  lie  heyond  the  domains  of  science, 
in  the  regions  of  faith.  Science  treats  of  things — faith  is 
confidence  in  persons.  Take  away  the  persons,  and  of  what 
value  are  the  things?  The  world  becomes  at  once  a  vast 
desert,  a  dreary  solitude,  and  more  miserable  than  any  of 
its  former  inhabitants  the  lonely  wretch  who  is  left  to  mourn 


516  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

over  the  graves  of  all  his  former  companions — the  last  man. 
Solitary  science  were  awful.  Could  I  prosecute  the  toils  of 
study  alone,  without  companion  or  friend  to  share  my  labors? 
Would  I  study  eternally  with  no  object,  and  for  no  use ; 
none  to  be  benefited,  none  to  be  gratified  by  my  discoveries? 
Though  you  hung  maps  on  every  tree,  made  every  moun- 
tain range  a  museum,  bored  mines  in  every  valley,  and  cov- 
ered every  plain  with  specimens,  made  Vesuvius  my  cruci- 
ble, and  opened  the  foundations  of  the  earth  to  my  view — 
yet  would  the  discovery  of  a  single  fresh  human  footprint  in 
the  sand  fill  my  heart  with  more  true  hope  of  happiness,  than 
an  endless  eternity  of  solitary  science.  I  can  live,  and  love, 
and  be  happy  without  science,  hut  not  without  companion- 
ship,  whose  bond  is  faith. 

Faith  is  the  condition  of  all  the  happiness  you  can  know 
on  earth.  Law,  order,  government,  civilization,  and  family 
life,  depend  not  upon  science,  but  upon  confidence  in  moral 
character — upon  faith.  In  its  sunshine  alone  can  happiness 
grow  It  is  faith  sends  you  out  in  the  morning  to  your 
work,  nerves  your  arms  through  the  toils  of  the  day,  brings 
you  home  in  the  evening,  gathers  your  wife  and  your  chil- 
dren around  your  table,  inspires  the  oft-repea*ed  efforts  of 
the  little  prattler  to  ascend  your  knee,  clasps  his  chubby 
arms  around  your  neck,  looks  with  most  confiding  inno- 
cence in  your  eye,  and  puts  forth  his  little  hand  to  catch 
your  bread,  and  share  your  cup.  Undoubting  faith  is  hap- 
piness even  here  below.  Need  you  marvel,  then,  that  you 
must  be  converted  from  your  pride  of  empty,  barren  science, 
and  casting  yourself  with  all  your  powers  into  the  arms  of 
faith,  become  as  a  little  child  before  you  can  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven? 

4.  But  religion  is  not  founded  upon  faith  as  distinct  from 
observation  and  experiment.  It  is  the  most  experimental  of 
all  the  sciences.  There  is  less  of  theory,  and  more  of  ex- 
perience in  it  than  in  any  other  science.     Its  faith  is  all 


SCIENCE,    OR    FAITH?  51T 

practical  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  faitli  is  the 
oppo:ate  pole  of  experience.  On  the  contrary,  experience 
is  the  fruit  which  ripens  from  the  blossom  of  faith.  We 
have  seen  how  an  underlying  conviction  of  the  existence 
of  an  intelligent  planner  and  upholder  of  the  laws  of 
nature  is  the  source  of  all  scientific  experiment,  and  syste- 
matized knowledge.  A  similar  underlying  conviction  of  the 
existence  of  a  moral  governor  of  the  world  is  the  source  of 
all  religious  experience.  He  that  cometli  to  God  must  be- 
lieve that  he  is^  and  that  he  is  the  rewarder  of  those  that 
diligently  seek  him.  But  this  fundamental  axiom  believed, 
long  trains  of  experience  follow;  of  every  one  of  which  you 
can  be,  and  actually  are,  infinitely  more  certain  than  of  any 
fact  of  physical  science.  Your  eyes,  your  ears,  your  touch, 
your  instruments,  your  reason,  may  be  deceived ;  but  your 
consciousness  can  not.  If  your  soul  is  fillel  with  joy,  that 
is  a  fact.  You  know  it,  and  are  as  sure  of  it  as  you  are  that 
the  sun  shines.  If  you  feel  miserable,  you  are  so.  A  sense 
of  neglected  duty,  a  consciousness  that  you  have  done 
wrong,  and  are  displeased  with  yourself  for  it ;  a  certainty 
that  God  is  displeased  with  you  for  wrong  doing,  and  that 
he  will  show  his  displeasure  by  suitable  punishment ;  the 
tenacious  grasp  of  vicious  habits  on  your  body  and  soul, 
and  the  fearful  thought  that  by  the  law  of  your  nature 
these  vipers,  which  you  vainly  struggle  to  shake  ofi*,  will  for- 
ever keep  involving  you  more  closely  in  their  cursed  coils — 
these  are  facts  of  your  experience  You  are  as  certain  that 
they  give  you  disquiet  of  mind,  when  you  entertain  them, 
as  that  the  sea  rages  in  a  tempest ;  and  that  you  can  no 
more  prevent  their  entrance,  nor  compel  their  departure, 
nor  calm  nor  drown  the  anxiety  they  occasion,  than  you  can 
prevent  the  rising  of  the  tempest,  dismiss  the  thunder- 
storm, or  drown  Etna  in  your  wine-glass.  Of  these  primary 
facts  of  moral  science,  and  of  others  like  them,  you  possess 
the  most  absolute  and  infallible  certainty  from  your  own 


518  SCIENCE,  OR   FAITH? 


consciousness.  They  result  from  the  inertia  of  moral  mat- 
ter, which,  when  put  into  a  state  of  disturbance,  has  no 
power  of  bringing  itself  to  rest ;  as  expressed  in  the  form- 
ula, There  is  no  peace,  saifh  mi/  God,  to  the  loiched.^^ 

Let  us  now  go  out  of  your  own  experience,  as  you  must 
do  in  every  other  science,  into  the  region  of  observation, 
and  study  a  few  of  the  other  phenomena  of  religion.  Your 
comrade,  Jones,  has  taken  to  drinking  of  late,  and  also  to 
going  with  you  to  Sunday  lectures,  and  in  the  evening  to 
other  places  of  amusement.  He  has,  however,  been  warned 
that  the  next  time  he  comes  drunk  to  the  workshop  he  will 
be  discharged ;  and  as  he  is  a  clever  young  fellow,  and 
knows  more  about  the  Bible  than  you,  having  gone  to  Sab- 
bath-school when  a  boy,  and  is  able  to  use  up  the  saints 
cleverly,  you  would  be  sorry  to  lose  his  company.  So  you 
set  on  him  to  go  with  you  to  hear  a  temperance  lecture, 
hoping  that  he  may  be  induced  to  take  the  pledge ;  for  if 
he  does  not  you  fear  he  will  soon  lie  in  the  gutter.  He 
curses  you,  and  himself  too,  if  ever  he  listens  to  any  such 
stuff;  and  refuses  to  go.  You  can  easily  gather  a  hundred 
other  illustrations  of  the  great  law  of  the  moral  repulsion 
between  vice  and  truth,,  expressed  in  the  following  formula : 
"  This  is  the  condemnation,  that  light  is  come  into  the  world, 
and  men  loved  darkness  rather  than  light,  heatuse  their  deeds 
were  evil.  For  every  one  that  doeth  evil  hateth  the  light, 
neither  cometh  to  the  light,  lest  his  deeds  should  he  reproved ''"f 
Your  life,  however,  is  but  a  long  illustration  of  this  princi- 
ple. Have  you  not  willingly  remained  in  ignorance  of  the 
contents  of  the  Bible,  because  you  dislike  its  commands  ? 

There  is  another  fact  of  the  same  science — there,  in  the 
gutter  before  you,  wallowing  in  his  own  vomit,  covered  with 
rags,  besmeared  with  mud,  smelling  worse  than  a  hog,  his 


*  ]  saiab,  chap,  xlviii.  22. 
t  John,  chap.  iii. 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  519 

bruised  and  bleeding  mouth  unable  to  articulate  tbe  ob- 
scenities and  curses  he  tries  to  utter.  "  Ts  it  possible  that 
can  be  Bill  Brown !  Why,  only  three  years  ago  we  worked 
at  the  same  bench.  It  was  he  who  introduced  me  to  the 
Sunday  Institute  ;  as  clever  a  workman  and  as  jovial  a  com- 
rade as  I  ever  knew,  but  would  get  on  a  spree  now  and 
again  lie  had  a  good  father  and  mother,  got  considerable 
schooling,  had  good  wages,  got  married  to  a  clever  girl,  and 
had  two  fine  children.  Is  it  possible  he  could  make  such  a 
beast  of  himself  in  such  a  short  time?"  Yes,  quite  possi- 
ble, and  more,  quite  certain.  Not  only  in  his  case,  but  in 
all  others,  the  law  of  moral  gravitation  is  universal  and  in- 
fallible. ^'Uvil  men  and  seducers  wax  worse  and  worse."^ 
The  degradation  may  not  always  be  in  this  precise  form,  nor 
always  as  speedy;  as  all  heavy  bodies  do  not  fall  to  the 
same  place,  nor  with  like  rapidity.  But  it  is  always  as  cer- 
tain and  always  as  deep,  and  will  one  day  be  far  more  public. 
Fix  it  firmly  in  your  mind.  It  concerns  you  more  than  all 
the  s(  ience  you  will  ever  know.  You,  too,  are  in  the  course 
of  sin,  and  you  know  it.  You  have  already  begun  to  fall 
Come  again  into  this  room.  *  What,  into  a  prayer-meet- 
ing? I  don't  go  to  such  places."  But,  if  you  want  to 
study  the  phenomena  of  religion  scientifically,  you  should 
go  to  such  places  ;  just  as  if  you  want  to  study  geology,  you 
should  go  to  the  places  where  the  strata  are  exposed  to  view. 
I  do  not  ask  you  to  speak,  and  to  ask  people  to  pray  for  you, 
but  only  to  look  on  and  listen.  If  you  are  a  philosopher  I 
wish  you  to  cease  dogmatizing  about  fanaticism,  and  en- 
thusiasm, and  the  ignorance,  and  credulity  of  believers,  at 
least  until  you  philosophically  examine  the  evidence  upon 
which  they  believe  You  can  set  aside,  if  you  please,  their 
unfounded  beliefs  concerning  matters  beyond  their  capa  ity, 
and  also  their  confident  hopes  for  futurity.     What  I  wish 


2  Timothy,  chap.  iii.     Read  the  ^\hole  chapter. 


520  SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH? 

you  to  examine  is  their  actual  experience  of  religion,  as  they 
severally  relate  it  For  as  we  have  seen,  the  facts  of  con- 
sciousness are  just  as  certain,  and  as  ascertainable,  as  the 
facts  discovered  by  our  senses ;  and  there  is  no  reason  in 
the  world  why  we  should  not  pursue  the  study  of  religion 
in  the  same  way  that  we  gain  a  knowledge  of  science; 
namely,  by  collecting  and  studying  the  facts  accumulated 
by  those  who  have  made  experiments,  and  have  obtained  a 
practical  knowledge  of  the  matter. 

There  are  here,  as  you  see,  a  great  number  of  religious 
experimenters.  They  are  also  of  very  various  conditions 
of  life,  and  of  various  degrees  of  education.  Many  of  them 
are  moreover  well  known  to  you,  so  that  you  are  in  a  favor- 
able position  for  forming  a  fair  judgment  of  their  discov- 
eries. There  is  your  comrade  Smith,  Hopkins  who  does 
the  hauling  for  your  establishment,  Lawyer  Hammond,  Pro- 
fessor Edwards,  whose  chemical  lectures  you  attend.  Dr. 
Lawrence,  who  lectured  before  the  Lyceum  last  winter,  Mr. 
Heidcnberger,  who  wrote  a  series  of  articles  on  Comte's 
Positive  Philosophy  for  the  Investigator,  Mrs.  Bridgman, 
your  Aunt  Polly,  who  nursed  you  during  your  typhoid 
fever,  and  a  great  many  others  whom  you  know  quite  well 
Professor  Edwards  leads  in  prayer,  and  gives  a  brief  address. 
You  never  dreamt  that  he  was  hoaxing  you  when  he  told 
you  of  his  chemical  experience;  have  you  any  reason  to 
offer  for  believing  that  he  now  solemnly,  and  in  the  presence 
of  God,  lies  to  you  and  to  this  assembly,  when  he  tells  you 
of  the  peace  he  has  found  in  believing  in  Christ,  and  the 
happiness  he  experiences  in  uniting  with  his  brethren  in 
the  worship  of  God?  Or  is  he  more  liable  to  error  in  not- 
ing the  fact  of  his  mental  joy  or  sorrow,  than  in  observing 
the  effect  of  the  extraordinary  ray  in  double  refraction?  If 
not,  the  fact  that  he  has  felt  this  religious  experience,  is 
just  as  certain  as  the  fact,  that  he  has  seen  polarized  light. 

There  is  your  comrade  Smith,  whom  you  have  known  for 


SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH?  521 

years,  actually  got  up  to  speak  in  meeting.  You  are  sur- 
prised; but  listen:  "Neighbors  and  friends,  most  of  you 
know  I  never  cared  much  about  religion,  and  was  often 
given  to  take  more  liquor  than  was  good  for  me,  and  then  I 
would  fight  and  curse  awful  bad  I  knew  as  well  as  any- 
body that  it  wasn't  right,  and  always  felt  bad  after  a  spree, 
and  many  a  time  I  said  I  would  turn  over  a  new  leaf,  and 
be  good.  But  it  was  all  no  use,  for  as  soon  as  any  of  the 
fellows  would  come  around  after  me,  I  always  went  along 
with  them,  till  at  last  I  gave  it  up  and  said  it  was  no  use 
to  try.  Still,  whenever  any  of  my  acquaintances  died,  I 
felt  scared  like;  and  I  kept  away  as  far  as  I  could  from 
churches  and  preachers  and  such  like,  because  I  could  not 
bear  to  think  about  Grod  and  judgment  to  come.  Well, 
about  five  weeks  ago  my  little  Minnie  set  on  me  one  Sab- 
bath morning  to  carry  her  to  church,  and  to  please  the  little 
creature — for  she  is  as  pert  a  darling  as  you  could  see  any- 
where— T  told  my  wife  to  get  her  ready,  and  we  would  go. 
She  seemed  as  if  she  would  cry,  and  kept  talking  to  her- 
self all  the  way.  When  we  got  into  the  church  the  sing- 
ing almost  upset  me,  for  I  had  not  been  to  a  church  since  I 
was  a  little  fellow,  just  before  father  and  mother  died.  But 
it  seemed  as  if  it  was  the  same  tune,  and  as  if  the  tune 
brought  them  all  back,  and  as  if  I  saw  them  again  and  all 
the  family,  and  heard  mother  sing  as  she  used  to,  and  I  for- 
got church  and  everything,  and  thought  I  was  a  little  fel- 
low playing  about  on  the  floor  just  as  I  used  to  do  when  I 
was  a  happy  child.  When  they  stopped  I  was  so  sorry,  and 
wished  I  could  ju^t  be  as  innocent  and  as  happy  as  I  was 
then.  Well,  it  seemed  like  the  preacher  had  been  reading 
my  thoughts,  for  he  gave  out  for  his  text,  '  Verily^  verily^  I 
say  unto  you^  unless  a  man  he  horn  again  lie  can  not  see  the 
kingdom  of  God.^  He  began  to  preach  how  Jesus  can  give 
us  new  hearts,  and  save  us  from  our  sins;  that  his  blood 
cleanses  from  all   sin  ;    that  he   is   able  to  save   to   the 


522  SCIENCE,    OR   FAITH  ? 

uttermost  all  that  come  unto  God  through  him.  Tho 
tears  came  into  my  eyes,  and  I  could  hardly  keep  my 
mouth  shut  till  I  got  out  When  I  got  home  I  knelt  down, 
and  cried  to  Jesus  to  save  me  from  my  sins;  and  my  wife 
prayed  too,  and  we  cried  for  mercy.  The  Lord  heard  us, 
and  I  felt  light  and  happy,  and  I  went  to  church  again,  and 
sung  with  the  rest  And  the  best  of  it  is,  the  Lord  de- 
livered me  from  the  drink ;  as  I  told  a  man  who  asked  where 
I  was  going  to-day,  and  I  told  him  I  was  going  to  prayer- 
meeting,  for  I  had  got  religion  now.  He  said  there  were  a 
great  manyTeligions,  and  most  of  them  wrong,  and  a  great 
many  people  said  all  religion  was  only  a  notion,  and  preach- 
ing only  nonsense.  I  says  to  him,  '  Look  here,  stranger,  do 
you  see  that  tavern  there?'  *  Yes,'  says  he.  '  Well,'  says 
I,  *  do  you  see  me  ? '  'I  do,  of  course,'  says  he.  '  Well,' 
says  T,  *  every  little  fellow  in  these  parts  knows  that  so  long 
as  Tom  Smith  had  a  quarter  in  his  pocket  he  could  never 
pass  that  tavern  without  having  a  drink.  All  the  men  in 
Jefferson  could  not  stop  him.  Now  look  here,'  says  I, 
*  there  is  my  week's  wages,  and  I  can  go  past,  and  thank 
God  I  don't  feel  the  least  like  drinking,  for  the  Lord  Jesus 
has  saved  me  from  it.  ]f  you  call  that  a  notion,  it  is  a 
mighty  powerful  notion,  and  it  is  a  notion  that  has  put 
clothes  on  my  children's  backs,  and  plenty  of  good  food  on 
my  table,  and  songs  of  praise  to  the  Lord  in  my  mouth. 
That's  a  fact,  stranger.  Glory  be  to  God  for  it.  And  I 
would  recommend  you  to  come  to  prayer-meeting  with  me, 
and  maybe  you  would  get  religion  too.  A  great  many  peo- 
ple are  getting  religion  now.'  " 

His  last  remark  is  certainly  very  true.  There  are  so 
many,  and  of  such  various  characters  and  grades  of  life, 
and  in  so  many  places,  that  every  reader  can  easily  find 
several  Tom  Smiths  of  his  own  acquaintance,  whose  con- 
versions display  all  the  essential  facts  of  this  case,  and  prove 
that: 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  623 

5.  The  facts  of  religious  experience  are  better  attested,  and 
more  unohjectionahle  than  those  of  any  other  science. 

Unless  they  can  be  shown  to  be  unreasonable  or  impossi- 
ble, we  are  bound  to  receive  them,  when  presented  by  the 
experimcntists  who  have  discovered  them,  though  person- 
ally we  may  not  have  any  such  experience ;  just  as  we  be- 
lieve the  chemists,  or  the  astronomers  who  relate  their  dis- 
coveries which  personally  we  have  not  observed.  But  the 
facts  of  religion  are  by  no  means  unreasonable.  They  can 
not  be  shown  to  contradict  any  known  law»of  the  human 
mind.  It  is  true  they  are  mysterious.  But  so  are  the  facts 
of  physical  science — heat,  light,  electricity,  gravitation.  Of 
either,  we  may  be  quite  certain  that  such  phenomena  exist, 
and  utterly  ignorant  of  the  mode  of  their  operation.  It 
were  as  utterly  unphilosophical  to  deny  that  Almighty  God 
could  impart  nervous  energy  to  the  languid  limbs  of  your 
sick  neighbor,  because  you  are  ignorant  of  its  origin  and 
means  of  transmission,  as  to  deny  that  God  could  impart 
spiritual  electricity  to  his  paralyzed  soul,  because  you  are 
ignorant  of  the  mode  in  which  he  bestows  it.  And  igno- 
rance is  all  that  you  can  plead  in  this  case.  You  must  just 
admit  that  having  tried  an  experiment  which  you  have  not, 
your  religious  friend  has  a  right  to  know  more  than  you. 

Moreover,  the  facts  of  religion  are  presented  for  belief 
upon  the  most  abundant  and  reliable  testimony.  In  physical 
science  you  must  rely  on  the  testimony  of  a  very  few  ob- 
servers— the  great  bulk  even  of  scientific  men  having  no 
opportunity  of  testing  the  facts  themselves,  and  being  well 
eatisfied  if  any  fact  is  confirmed  by  the  testimony  of  two  or 
three  philosophers — and  this  testimony  often  contradictory, 
and  always  fallible?,  as  the  discordant  results  of  their  exper- 
iments prove.  But  here  you  have  a  great  multitude  of  ex- 
perimcntists, in  every  city  and  village  of  the  land,  of  every 
variety  of  intellect  and  education,  prosecuting  the  same 
course  of  experiments,  and  all  arriving  at  the  same  results. 


524  SCIENCE,  OR  FAITH? 


They  do  not  all  confess  the  same  sins,  but  they  all  felt  the 
power  of  some  sin,  and  felt  miserable  in  their  guilt.  And 
however  they  may  differ  in  their  external  circumstances, 
their  inward  constitution,  or  in  their  views  of  the  outward 
part  of  religion,  there  is  no  difference  among  them  about 
the  great  facts  of  their  religious  experience.  They  all  be- 
lieved the  faithful  saying  that  Christ  Jesus  came  into  the 
world  to  save  sinners,  cried  to  God  for  mercy  through  him, 
and  received  peace  of  mind,  grace  to  live  a  new  life,  and  to 
delight  in  the  worship  of  God.  Do  you  know  any  science 
which  has  been  prosecuted  by  one-hundredth  part  of  this 
number  of  inquirers?  Which  has  been  confirmed  by  one- 
thousandth  part  of  this  number  of  experimenters?  Or  any 
experiment  tried  with  such  uniform  and  unfailing  success 
as  this,  "  Whosoever  shall  call  on  the  name  of  the  Lord  shall 
he  saved? ''^  Why  then  do  you  hesitate  to  admit  the  cor- 
rectness of  these  facts?  Is  it  because  you  perceive  they 
lead  to  results  which  you  dislike? 

They  do  lead  to  results.  They  are  effects  and  tell  us  of 
a  cause.  They  are  powerful  effects,  and  proclaim  a  power- 
ful cause.  They  are  moral  and  spiritual  effects,  and  assure 
us  of  the  existence  of  a  moral  and  spiritual  agent  who  has 
caused  them.  They  are  holy  effects,  and  convince  your  sin- 
ful soul  that  they  are  produced  by  a  holy  being.  But  they 
are  also  benevolent,  life-giving,  blessed  effects,  and  proclaim 
that  God  is  love.  The  Lord,  the  Spirit,  is  as  plainly  de- 
clared in  the  facts  of  religious  experience,  as  the  Creator  is 
in  the  creation  of  the  universe;  and  it  were  as  rank  Athe- 
ism to  attribute  these  orderly  and  blessed  results  to  chance 
or  to  evil  passions,  as  to  attribute  the  Cosmos  to  blind  fate, 
or  to  the  beasts  that  perish.  He  is  as  much  an  enemy  to 
his  happiness  who  denies  the  one,  as  a  foe  to  his  reason  who 


*  Romans,  chap,  x.    Read  the  chapter. 


SCIENCE,   OR  FAITH?  525 

rejects   the  other.     Dear  reader,  why  should  you  not  be- 
lieve in, 

6.  The  only  science  which  can  make  you  happy?  which 
can  bestow  peace  of  mind,  nerve  you  to  conquer  your  evil 
habits,  enable  you  to  live  a  holy  and  happy  life,  and  to  die 
with  a  blessed  hope  of  a  glorious  resurrection?  You  know 
there  is  no  science  which  makes  any  such  offers,  or  which 
you  would  believe  if  it  did.  But  the  Bible  unfolds  a  science 
which  does,  and  enables  you  to  believe  it  too.  The  facts  of 
religious  experience  give  most  convincing  evidence  of  the 
reality  and  power  of  the  grace  of  God.  It  were  as  easy  to 
persuade  a  Christian  that  he  had  produced  this  change  of 
heart  and  life  by  the  excitement  of  his  own  feelings,  as  that 
he  had  kindled  the  sun  with  a  lucifer  match.  And  the 
character  of  the  work  and  the  worker  assures  him  that  it 
will  not  be  left  unfinished.  His  faith  receives  these  facts 
of  religious  experience  as  the  first  installments  upon  God's 
bonds,  and  as  pledges  for  the  payment  of  the  remainder  of 
his  promises  The  joy  and  peace  which  God  gives  him 
now,  prove  most  satisfactorily  his  ability  and  willingness  to 
give  him  larger  measures  of  these  enjoyments  when  he  is 
capable  of  receiving  them.  Just  as  we  have  good  reason 
to  believe  that  he  who  has  made  the  sun  to  rise  out  of 
darkness  will  guide  him  onward  in  his  course  to  perfect  day, 
have  we  also  good  reason  to  believe  that  he  that  hath  begun 
the  good  work  of  his  grace  in  us  will  perform  it  until  the 
day  of  Jesus  Christ.  Christ  is  in  us  the  hope  of  glory. 
This  eternal  life,  which  is  begun  in  our  souls,  is  so  much 
superior  to  mere  animal  vitality,  that  we  can  not  doubt  that 
he  who  has  given  us  the  greater,  will  also  give  us  the  lesser, 
and  quicken  our  mortal  bodies  also,  by  his  Spirit  which 
dwelleth  in  us.     We  know  that  our  Redeemer  liveth. 

7.  And  now,  in  conclusion,  dear  reader,  we  ask  you  not 
to  take  these  things  on  our  testimony,  nor  yet  on  our  ex- 
perience J  hut  to  try  for  younelf.     Oh  taste  and  see  that  the 


526  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

Lord  is  good.  Come  see  the  Savior  who  has  saved  us,  and 
be  saved  by  him  too.  There  is  nothing  more  dangerous, 
unless  resisting  the  evidence  of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus, 
than  acknowledging  this  to  be  truth  without  immediately 
obeying  the  gospel.  God  requires  your  immediate  and 
cordial  acceptance  of  Christ  to  save  you  from  your  sins.  He 
tells  you  that  the  only  way  of  escape  from  your  sins  now 
and  from  hell  hereafter  is  through  him ;  for  there  is  none 
other  name  given  under  heaven  or  among  men  whereby  you 
must  be  saved.  He  promises  to  hear  your  prayer  and  give 
you  his  Holy  Spirit  to  work  in  you  the  work  of  faith  with 
power,  if  you  will  only  and  earnestly  ask.  ''Ask,  and  it 
shall  he  given  you;  seek,  and  ye  shall  find;  knock,  and  it 
shall  be  opened  unto  you:  What  man  is  there  of  you  whom 
if  his  son  ask  bread,  will  he  give  him  a  stone  f  Or  if  he  ask 
a  fish,  will  he  give  him  a  serpent  ?  If  ye  then  being  evil 
know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children,  how  much 
more  shall  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  give  good  things 
to  them  that  ask  himf^'^ 

Thus  you  will  come  to  possess  an  actual  experimental 
knowledge  of  the  most  excellent  of  the  sciences.  In  the 
present  begun  enjoyment  of  eternal  life  you  will,  not  merely 
believe  in,  but  positively  know,  its  Author,  the  only  true 
God,  and  Jesus  Christ  whom  he  hath  sent.  You  will  rest 
in  no  fallible  and  erring  testimony  of  man's  wisdom,  but 
your  faith  will  stand  in  the  power  of  God.  You  will  be 
able  to  say,  ''Now  we  believe  not  because  of  thy  sayings :  for 
we  have  heard  him  ourselves,  and  KNOW  that  this  is  indeed 
the  Christ,  the  Savior  of  the  world.'' f 

Hear  God's  own  warrant  and  invitation  to  your  poor, 
thirsty  soul,  to  forsake  your  vanities  and  come  and  be  eter- 


'  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount.    Read  it  alL 
f  John,  chap.  iv. 


SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH?  627 

Dally  blessed  in  Christ.     Have  the  witness  in  yourself  and 
be  a  living  proof  of  the  blessed  reality  of  religion. 

"  Ho  every  one  that  thirsteth !     Come  ye  to  the  waters  ! 
''  And  he  who  hath  no  money  !     Come  ye,  buy  and  eat ! 
"  Yea,  come !    Buy  wine  and  milk  without  money  and  with- 
out price 
"  Wherefore  do  ye  spend  money  for  that  which  is  not  bread  ? 
'*  And  your  labor  for  that  which  satisfieth  not  ? 
"  Hearken  diligently  unto  me  and  eat  ye  that  which  is  good, 
"  And  let  your  soul  delight  itself  in  fatness. 
''  Incline  your  ear  and  come  unto  me : 
"  Hear  and  your  soul  shall  live  : 
"  And  I  will  make  an  everlasting  covenant  with  you, 
"  Even  the  sure  mercies  of  David. 
"  Behold !  I  have  given  him  for  a  witness  to  the  people, 
''  A  leader  and  a  commander  to  the  people: 
'  Behold !  thou  shalt  call  nations  that  thou  knowest  not, 
"  And  nations  that  knew  not  thee  shall  run  unto  thee, 
"  Because  of  the  Lord  thy  God, 
"  And  for  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  for  he  hath  glorified  thee. 

"  Seek  ye  the  Lord  while  he  may  be  found, 

"  Call  ye  upon  him  while  he  is  near : 

"  Let  the  wicked  forsake  his  way, 

"  And  the  unrighteous  man  his  thoughts ; 

"  And  let  him  return  unto  the  Lord,  and  he  will  have  mercy 

upon  him, 
"  And  to  our  God  for  he  will  abundantly  pardon. 
"  For  my  thoughts  are  not  your  thoughts, 
"  Neither  are  your  ways  my  ways,  saith  the  Lord. 
"  For  as  the  heavens  are  higher  than  the  earth, 
"  So  are  my  ways  higher  than  your  ways, 
"  And  my  thoughts  than  your  thoughts, 
i'  For  as  the  rain  cometh  down,  and  the  snow  from  heaven, 
"  And  return  not  thither  again, 


528  SCIENCE,   OR   FAITH? 

"  But  water  the  earth,  and  cause  it  to  bring  forth  and  bud, 
''  That  it  may  give  seed  to  the  sower,  and  bread  to  the  eater; 
""  So  shall  my  word  be  that  goeth  forth  out  of  my  mouth : 
**  It  shall  not  return  unto  me  void, 
"  But  it  shall  accomplish  that  which  I  please, 
"  And  it  shall  prosper  in  the  thing  whereto  I  sent  it. 
"  For  ye  shall  go  out  with  joy,  and  be  led  forth  with  peace. 
"  The  mountains  and  the  hills  shall  break  forth  before  you 

into  singing, 
"  And  all  the  trees  of  the  fields  shall  clap  their  hands. 
"  Instead  of  the  thorn  shall  come  up  the  fir  tree, 
"  And  instead  of  the  brier  shall  come  up  the  myrtle  tree : 
"  And  it  shall  he  to  the  Lord  for  a  name, 
"  For  an  everlasting  sign  that  shall  not  he  cut  offJ* 


[the   END;] 


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